Tastes Like Home

The salmon tasted like the seashore, like salty air and gulls crying, flying overhead on the cold breeze. It tasted like relatives coming together around a picnic table, laughing, talking as the feast is spread, as the ocean stretches endlessly right beside us. It tasted like lobster, red and spiny, like melted butter and messy hands slipping, gripping a metal nutcracker around the hard shell. It tasted like Maine beaches, a maze of shifting, settling rocks, continuing all the way from the trees on one side to the water on the other. It tasted like seaweed, washed up on the rocks, covering the ground closest to the water in a slippery, slimy layer of wet danger, waiting for you to fall. It tasted like tidal pools, filled with tiny life, with mini orange or green crabs that scuttled under cover, and snails that hide in their shells when you pick them up, but come out if you hum to them. It tasted like wave-tossed pebbles, like scavenger hunts for sparkling treasure, glass past bottles thrown away, trash, and I am ‘another man.’ The salmon tasted like the seashore, like salty air and gulls circling above the water. I put down my fork and closed my eyes, transported back into a realm of memories I’d somehow forgotten.