When I was born, I did not feed
for three days. My mother’s nipples swollen
with mastitis, too thick to latch
onto, swallow around. The nurse hissed the worst case
I’ve ever seen as she milked her breasts
on the living room floor. I cried,
ravenous. How did I know to be hungry?
I, who had never eaten.

I heard a kitten weaned
too early will keep suckling her whole
life, mouth searching blankets, elbows, strangers,
for what she needs. My condition was not caused
by the lack of milk, but its abundance. Bud
too rich to latch. This is my whole life's
contradiction: to be surrounded by plenty,
and still starve.

You start to notice if you look
at it too close: chips of bone,
pulverized glass, shards of teeth,
whale spine, microplastic nurdles
and grains like clear, dirty seeds.
Of course, the earth
is salted: nothing can grow
here. Evaporated sea flakes
off your shoulder. I catch
it, secret as your smile, the things
you didn’t tell me. You haven’t realized
yet: your naked skin is scorching
raw against this gorgeous graveyard.

You learn first what you can open, and cannot. Like the chipmunk you caught cleaving walnuts, or the otter shattering oysters upon rocks, you discover how to bludgeon coconuts, guillotine pineapples. You forget the taste of a first kiss you can’t talk about. Honey badgers court cobras they sever at the neck with the same teeth that crack tortoise shells, defy lions. They shake vigorously, heedless of envenomed fangs. You grew up feeding from the sea: beaked parrotfish, shucked opihi, kelp paper. Your father’s family emerged from Jeju, an island where husbands kept kids and women coaxed the ocean to open up her secrets: pearls and serpents, crabs and sea cucumbers, cracked abalone and lusty lobsters. How many thoughts did you hide away, calcify, only to be husked or neatly flayed naked? How many friends did you teach to wield a waiter’s corkscrew—decapitate wine bottles—the right way? It’s easy, see: once you’ve opened one, you’ve opened all of them.