5/9/25

Lobster Time at the Upside-down House

Poetry
Sydney Rousseau


Only eight years old
at the upside-down house

Chaffed ribcages and salt-stuck skin
She’d say fuck for the first time in a floating rhyming game (it was an accident!)

Dig like a dog for the wettest sand

Drip

            drip

                        drip

                                    py

                                    castle                         always her mom’s favorite kind

Kitchen on top bedrooms on bottom she didn’t get one; slept on the pull-out couch for the 7 days she was just fine (as would be expected) (by the hissy fit she threw you’d think she was asked to sleep in the sand) spoiled? coddled? spoiled. yellow wagon full of toys chairs towels shovels time to walk along the yellow lined spliced road to the spiked entrance of the parking lot then to the
dunes from morning ‘til afternoon waves, where the rhyming game with mom and dad floating nearby she’s too scared to be on her own (what if there’s seaweed) bubblegum ice cream how about cotton candy become staples rainbow sprinkles and Buster Krabs with dinner inside the little cardboard cars outside the fish market stench and slime mingle with wafting mealtime dinnertime lunchtime fish market family lobster time crawling in the plastic bags on the top-heavy kitchen, counter. Pets? Playtime not lunchtime watch them crawl out one got out! New friend new pal, oh no it’s fallen now

                                                                Crack

                                                                            crack

                                                                                        crack

                                                                                                        ack

                                                  goes the lobster






Sydney Rousseau is a junior at Gallatin from Dublin, New Hampshire concentrating in creative writing, English literature, and interior design. When not reading, writing, or obsessively redecorating her apartment, she can be found with her dog, Finnley, in Madison Square Park.