the prescriptions help, but

Life is funny if you squint hard enough. Amidst reality and our war to ignore it, there are moments of blinding brightness. On this particular morning and every other after it, salt-crusted crabs crawl from the void to fight for a reason they know but cannot recite upon questioning. My friends and family continue to spin around me like horses on a carousel. Things change and then change back again. Stores shift spaces because no one can afford rent in Santa Barbara. We've just moved in to our studio. It's a garage worth your whole paycheck. The crabs fight on, scampering past children, tourists, and homeless men who sleep beneath the pier until they are swallowed by the brine. You repeatedly tell the frizzy haired female manager of Sears that you have a bachelor's in English. In front of the art museum a band plays and I listen with my eyes closed, moving my hips. Two women, early eighties, sit and watch me. I catch them staring but neither of us acknowledge it. They don't look away.

On the pier there's a shack of sorts that sells fresh fish tacos and authentic crab cakes. The branded crayfish with fists forced shut by multicolored rubber bands look out from their foggy tanks. Crabs claw at each other on the sun-bleached wood slabs below, exoskeletons whacking dully in moisture laden air.

I have to laugh. The tanked crabs, lobsters —some long dead, hone their black beady eyes to the fight below. The art museum band breaks into an afro-cuban jazz bit. The women watch me dance. Their hips have been replaced, claws bound, they sit now in their tanks as I move through the world pretending there isn't one waiting for me.