On Hearing Pasta Water Should Be Salty

like the sea:
as if you've ever even tasted the sea,
let alone liked it.
You like pictures of it,
but a thing isn't a picture of the thing.

This is not the ocean.

So you try different ratios:
salty like tears:
salty like olive brine:
salty like semen:
salty like post-run lips:
salty like smothering a grease fire:
salty like the street in winter.

You who've never seen the sea,
let alone rolled it around in your mouth
judging it.

As if out of ten this sea deserves
a body:
your body:
an extra cup of salt:
a herring return:
a shipwreck:
the moon's reflection
on the water.

Then one day you find yourself
nearly crushed by the Pacific
going Oh oh oh
thinking of all the things in the world
of pasta.
Thinking salty, like the sea.

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Amelia Gorman is a recent transplant to Eureka, California. You can find her walking her dogs or foster dogs in the woods or exploring tide pools. Her fiction has appeared recently in Nightscript 6 and Cellar Door from Dark Peninsula Press. Read some of her poetry in New Feathers and Vastarien. Her first chapbook, Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota, is available from Interstellar Flight Press.