Italics are the crab talking (I think).

We’re out of control, and cocktail sauce

Destined to boil, that crab (I imagine)

sees me, seeing it. You make a bitter

familiar, tied to the harsh schedule in

your prison. Both of us will be better

come dinnertime. I’m not hungry. My pain

won’t be mellowed by hot buttered spider.

It’s my wrist—plus all this lack of control.

I’m too nervous to wield the shell cracker.

I wish you’d climb out of there and side-stroll

out the door, through town and to the ocean.

We’re underwater. We just gotta roll—

even if it’s California. The banks

closed on the seabed, but I’ve got my whole

life ahead of me. So what? I got tanked.

Too late? Too early? Here is here is here

is here is where I am with claws and shanks.

Adapt. Bubble. Crawl—and then an arm yanks.