Oceanic Quotes

“A snake heart can slide up and down the length of its body
when it needs to. You’ll never be able to catch my pulse, my shine.”
― Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oceanic

“Aubade with Cutlery and Crickets"

In the dinner I cook for myself tonight,
you are an open drawer of cutlery.

I've smelled the top notes of butter knives
at your shoulder, the tang hidden in the blade

of your walk. I need a serving spoon
to scoop dal into a cool ceramic, a fork

with tines long enough to pierce the skin
of the butternut squash roasted

in honeyjuice. Even your hands
have become a kind of instrument—

delicate enough to slide crabmeat
out of the shell, sturdy enough to crack

a breastbone if need be. Or maybe what
I smelled that morning still full of starlight

and crickets when we said goodbye—
was the clean coolness of a knife's ricasso,

the flat rest for a thumb just before
the blade disappears into its handle.”
― Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oceanic

“I’d rather share sunrise with him and loon call over the lake with him, the slap of shoreline threaded through screen windows with him—my heart slamming in my chest, against my shirt—a kind of kindling you’d never be able to light on your own.”
― Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oceanic

“Sometimes it is possible to still embrace the wildness of home, even if the lone window in your room only blooms snow and more snow.”
― Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oceanic