Summer...

What summer?

It's been a time of lobsters turning red in my stock pot like a cruel miracle. It's been a time of feral lobsters crawling in my yard, eating the grass seeds my landlord has seeded the yard with. Grass lobsters. I dream I am near the ocean, I can smell the saltiness in the wind and in my skin.

It's been a time of scallops, famous scallops, milky in their thick plastic bag when I carry them home on the bike I stole from my ex-boyfriend. We're still friends, the scallops and I, most especially when I consume them, seared in butter in my little pan with a handle carved out of ocotillo. I am a desert girl in an ocean town. Scallops are an ocean butter in my grass-fed bovine butter.

It's been a time of mussels, but when is it not? Steamed creatures spilling all their orange and chestnut secrets to me. I bake bread and and rip it and dip it in the jouissance. I sprinkle myself in sea-salt harvested from the bellybuttons of virgins.

It's been a time of oysters. I've been making bets about how many oysters I can eat in a year. I've been fulfilling all my bets. I've been betting all my fulfillments on more oysters. I've been out driving to other ocean cities in search of new varieties of raw. Oysters, I tell them, it's your time. One night, Heather and I ate two hundred and sixteen oysters each and dreamed of oyster cosmos. An oyster is one part silver and one million parts ocean, then inverted and times twelve. An oyster is an omen of a new form of math in which there are no numbers and there is no time.

Summer? Come over. Have a glass of semillon with me and we'll discuss seafood and go hungry together in the fading heat.