Over homework, Natural History went back and forth.
We watched French films online and slept through church.

You told me that you dreamt about my mouth—
God crept in, the crab meandered out.

I woke up wholly baffled by the day
under my tongue, the scuttling lineage of decay

that, earlier, had colonized my bed.
I fell into the snow—not me, the person left—

the deity in my throat, recoiling, yearned
to be a little more crustacean, armored, adored.

Here in wintry Wellesley, people say 
that one can find real crabs; real men; real graves. 

Once, I loved a textbook’s diagrams
of dinosaurs, and ancient fruits and mammals

a history of the world in miniature, which my
dad let loose from its hardcovers at bedtime.

I’d ask you what you think regarding love,
but you’d say, uh, I think this is enough—

After Anne Sexton

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Matilda Lin Berke is online and girlblogging at Filmmaker Magazine. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Forever Magazine, Hobart, Spike Art Magazine, and The Adroit Journal. She’s re-reading Don Delillo’s End Zone, which is short and underrated.