I am a snail.
Timid. Frail.
Stuck in my home
which I carry, endlessly, forever.
But the outside isn’t all.
I am not just that:
a slow moving comet
in a petrichor desert.
To tired eyes, that is me.
Stuck to a grass blade or cooking concrete,
a passing fad made obsolete.
That is, from the outside, my shell.
Inside,
Past my pearl exterior
is a mechanism finely tuned.
It lives there, by my heart
ticking away in silver song.
Hungrily,
Flip me over.
Peel me apart.
Cut open my foot and pry with muddy hands
Past tender meat, colored vibrant with imagination,
and find that clockwork heart.
Feel my ticking tempo
my inner metronome.
Feel my choked dancing pulse
and know the songs hidden within.
Even as your gluttonous urges
and sanguine hands
squeeze out the final measures.
Feel the weight of the weightless
the libraries of books unfilled–
vivisected flesh colored,
living, in my shell.
Know what the outside hides, now.
The dull cartilage carapace
that briefly blotted out your asphalt universe.
A gate, a key, a padlock.
The dying light of infinite knowledge
coloring your five-fingered greed.
That is, on the inside, myself.
Vibrant hue and pops of color
dot the cul-de-sac like an oil spill
as your kin step on snails
and stain their hands with possibility.
by Audrey B.