Chopping romaine for a salad, I see the triangular rib in section, and I am back in a light rain in Ísafjörður's harbor watching a spry little man turn a by-caught sea monster into a neat stack of slabs. It was boneless but not spineless, like all of its kind. With two long knives the man sheared though the cartilaginous column, revealing the circle-in-triangle that runs the length of the beast, translucent and containing whatever squaline ichor served it as a brain.
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The boneless rib of a leaf of romaine is just the same shape, has just the same translucence.