seablood blue, bonefree. reefed. dropping onto prey suction cupped arms out, mouth a lost cavern. father dead on mating, mother dead postbirth. after the latch the body turns on itself – cellular implosion. chameleioid

the blood to organ pump stops beating for a while to let her rest after swimming. this softbodied mollusc. multibrachial and me poly-limbed. I am almost always sometimes sure of whose limbs are whose. we swim. our bodies bilaterally symmetric, one colour vector in the eye – two each. one beak, one mouth, gel-body altering and altering to squeeze through each month-decade. I am limited by the size of its head, the way it sinks on my beak-over-heart

the octopus has one pump for its body and one each for its two gills. the bodyheart stops when it is surviving. powerdown. we are reduced to this coin to flip – her heart or my lungs. octopus blood is copperbased. mined in its circulating heart. mine is full of iron. as alloys we make each other more durable, less subject to corrosion in the currents. my tensile strength plays out in my shoulders, hers makes for resistance. could be useful if salvaged

the octopus clung tighter as I grew and I am careful to make sure I do not catch it on the door handle and snag it like a jumper. careful not to give it too much light or heat. I live underwater as much as I can with my stupid human lungs made of mostly water but incapable of breathing it

the octopus has always been there. what do you mean by asking about before. there was no before

only the blueringed octopus hapalochlaena is deadly to humans. changes colour dramatically. spends most of her time hiding in crevices. piles up rocks at the mouth of her lair. my octopus is senescent. I’ve never felt its weight, my body strong around it like a tree around a barbed fence, unfeeling in the all the places needed

the octopus has eight limbs – two attach to me, the others are for hunting. one goes straight into my ear to find my brain, another plunges an eye and I am left with a mucusy seawater film, only see a sucker round my orbital bone. these arms are all nerve, sheathed in muscle, lined with bathmat rings with an infundibulum hollow on the outside, a cuticle. these arms sense light, so when its head is buried in my chest it can still do what it needs to with the rest of me

an octopus is capable of deceit

the extra appendages tuck neatly around me. have a mind of their own. a siphon that expels water as light might air. propelled through ocean all that pressure pushed out of the body. me? I do one step one step one step on, holding my breath on the sea bed. we are intertidal, plunging to abyssal depths. here in the dark we are more I, or I am more she

the octopus learns nothing from her parents. only left to grow in a place of the mother’s choosing. left to find a way out of the lost. figure out where danger. and who. left at birth in a direct and literal way, to die, through her short life, alone. figuring it out as she goes, alert, an evolutionary history of panic painted skin. how to stay alive without someone to stand between you and the currents, between you and the predator. which of course she did while you were eggling. not her fault that this is the way of things. she was doing her best

the octopus is a smooth finebodied clutch pencil. eyes on skin, opsins everywhere. beak clip hankering for paper, covered and covered with language, held by a rough nib, grippable beak, tentacles and an HB mouth soft, slow thoughts slow enough to get them inked, shrunk enough to handle

it is harder to write down here, and I am used as camouflage in the undercurrent, melanin in the water when threatened. and she is always threatened. I am always full of ink. I am a well of it

every single organ full of toxins she releases venom into prey. respiratory depression. the victim is aware of her surroundings but cannot communicate distress. paralysis is evident but nothing to be done. survivable if you get on an artificial respirator in time. if

skin reflects green-blue. chromatophores play contrast. make her seem more one thing than another

on copulation the female often has to remove the male by force – hectocotylus in her mantle cavity repeatedly. one clutch of eggs is incubated under her arms for six months – during this time the female doesn’t eat. they hatch. she dies. she didn’t think motherhood would be like this