Eating Sea Urchin

2 Minutes Read Time

A plate of sea urchins, cracked in half. Inside are orange, fleshy, inside parts. — Photo by Jun Ohashi on Unsplash

For the moment, speech is paused.
In the silence of the restaurant, we consider 
the orange flesh, sagittal as a stilled
tongue, before placing it on our own.
Like most forms of magic, I’ve always believed 
in words. For instance, the time you told me
it was over. Not that what you’d said
was true, but that by saying it everything instantly 
was changed. To change where you are,
you might press your tongue’s wet muscle 
to a word round and glowing as the button 
of an elevator and arrive a moment later
in a place unforeseen. Or use it to undo 
your shirt one iridescent disc of a word 
at a time until, tongue slipping delicately 
in and out the stitching, you transform 
into something that no longer has a skin.
But the tongue is not a blade: the blade
is the pain that opens the mouth and finds 
the soft, forgiving tongue inside. Uni—
like any word resisted long enough—is salt
turned finally sweet on the tongue. It’s all right 
to say this is not the life you want for yourself 
even one moment longer. That you choose 
something other. This is how we each
might finally become different people—
with the gentle, wincing crack of a knife.

Keetje Kuipers

released her fourth collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (BOA Editions, 2025), which was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and Poetry, and have been honored by publication in The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, Bread Loaf Fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. She lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she is Editor of Poetry Northwest.

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