bivalve ovenbird On a beach echoing with the call of humpbacks and strewn with the limbs of dying starfish I plucked a purple shell from the sand, two halves hinged like a hollow book, two cupped hands that failed to hold water with their perpetual wanting. I tucked the remains of a mindless mollusk into my right pocket. A worry doll to stroke with anxious fingertips. A pebble that might be worn smooth as a pearl. But the scrap of muscle and meat that lived in that calcified cave was not quite done with its home and two days later its ghost rose up to haunt me. Decaying flesh sent forth a flare of rank trimethylamine and though I tossed the offending souvenir back into the ocean the smell settled into every fiber of my coat and would not be removed with all the soap in the world. You can crack me open and scrape fat from the hinge that holds the halves of who I am, but I’ll cling to what is left of home and torment you with the putrid pall of my persistence. 260310 what's it to you? who go blather from