The Third Time We Meet

By Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

The terraza’s closed to stop a Castilian corriente sweeping through the flat, smashing doors and breaking glass.

‘Amelia?’

My lover’s mother doesn’t turn from the hob.

‘Amelia?’

She rips a bulb from a garland of garlic, digs into the flesh, splits it into cloves. ‘Qué?’

From a sack, a squirming sound: shell against shell, squeaking legs, antennae, mandibles. She extracts a blue-green crayfish, its body writhes in her hand.

‘Amelia, I’m pregnant.’

She plunges the animal into boiling water; it hisses on impact, shell flares into red.
Much later I’ll ask if that noise is a scream, or just air.

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“I write as a way to find flow, get a buzz, uncover meaning.” – the writer