GONDWANA

---

︎︎︎ Anna Krivolapova

---

︎ Nov 18, 2025

---

We are five hours from the ocean and the crabs aren’t fresh. I cover the dining room with paper until it looks like a padded cell and climb onto the table before everyone arrives. I wait for my guests like surgery. In a few hours this room will be painted iodine, with orange enamel crunching underfoot and hammers trading hands across my face. I will disappear under piles of spice, fossilized in rock salt, resisting my guests’ attempts to pry up my carapace and taste my thoughts. I am scraping the cage. I want to call you. I am thinking about the way your arch fits my cheekbone, my size ten telephone, Brazil and West Africa, together again. There are hundreds of crabs scattered across this table and they all have your eyes. Of my seventeen guests, nine have a vulgar way of dangling you by the claw. I am starting to understand why you came with a quiver of mallets. You make everything look like a nail.