uncle slams the spotted octopus against black lava rocks, tentacles gripping his arm, hand, fingers, his hair tearing from the roots, a heavy slap splash smacking our ears as the tide rises above the once shallow pools, sea urchin and cucumbers finding safety in cracks and crannies, and we wait for him to finish and start on the next one, our mouths wanting to be filled with tenderized meat and shoyu, as aunty slices each tentacle thinly, cuts away beaks and eyes, tearing out insides, opening up bodies for sashimi, poke, squid luau, the ocean, drying, mottled salt flaking our brown skin
we scramble across slippery rocks as the tide pulls out, knives strapped to our legs, empty Calrose rice bags hanging from our belts, as we go further and further out each time, our catch smaller and smaller from over picking, and we wonder when we will no longer be able to feel their conical shells under our nimble fingers, to pry their clinging muscles from the lava rock with the edges of our blades, the memory of the sweet taste of their raw flesh on our tongues, getting just one more before the tide starts to come back in, as we risk joining the spirts of our fathers, uncles, cousins, brothers in the dark depths below
He walks across lava in rubber tabi, careful not to slip on smooth pahoehoe, his flashlight, shining red, not white. In his other hand is a bamboo fishing pole, split into an upside-down horseshoe at its tip, made to catch a’ama crab by their eyestalks. On his hip, an empty rice bag, Calrose and California, roses and rice faded from reuse. He wishes to fill it for his niece’s first baby luau, his sister telling him to be careful, not to lose his footing. He’s not worried. At least he doesn’t have to pick opihi, clinging to rocks, knife handle in his mouth, as the tide tries to pull him out. He lost an uncle that way long ago.
He hopes the crab won’t see the red, a wavelength not seen by most creatures because it’s too long, like the light being carried from their namesake nebula, but he doesn’t know. This is something new for him. He thinks about how his ancestors caught a’ama with torches of kukui nut oil, the light flickering yellow and white and blue, light easily seen, and he hopes that if he switches from red to white quickly enough, he will be able to see them moving, black against black, before they see him silhouetted by the cloudless and moonless night sky.
Melissa Llanes Brownlee, a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in swamp pink, Craft, Moon City Review, Wigleaf and The Threepenny Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Published books include Hard Skin (Juventud Press) and Kahi and Lua (Alien Buddha.) She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.
