CW: Body Horror

1. [octopus] arms are joined at their bases by a web of tissue known as the skirt, at the centre of which lies

the mouth.

(Encyclopædia Britannica / entry: octopus)

2. [t]he [mollusk] radula is a spiked, muscular tongue-like organ with multiple rows of tiny teeth.

(Wikipedia / entry: octopus)

3. I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman Cephalopod

(Britney Spears / entry: Britney [disambiguation])

i was born a meaty tangle of arms 

just like any other creature of the chasm

any many-suckered salt-covered beast

like every unfathomable animal,

faithful predators we be.

recipe for a girlhood:

step 1. 

start with all the little deaths.

shake them out into an empty globe sliced off

at the equator. let them trample each other

for the peak of the trap heap like crawfish

snapping in their harvest pail.

them desperate. them brutes. 

them boneless. them grasping 

like they aren’t already dead.

we the predators. we the prey. 

we the spineless. yes—no 

backs to break. be broken.

we the shapeshifters. 

we the soft-bodied, ready

to shrink.

step 2.

winnow the water. measure the salt.

we the cyanide-blooded. 

we the reaped.

mercy. mercy. 

i want out of this harvest. you too. take your armor off

my mouth. take my arm. we can ladder out of here 

arm over tailfin. claw over arm. i’ll be the sucker 

this time. just promise you won’t leave me

stuck. tuck in your scythes. arm my mouth. i want out—

we the abyssal

the hadal 

the Hadean.

step 3.

trap the reapers.

crack the bones

of the deathly 

into threes. 

sinews shirr my limbs into a skirt.

at the center of my skirt is a mouth. 

in the gully of my mouth 

is a sawtooth tongue.

them the triplet

-hearted. we 

the ever dead—

step 4.

grind the bones

against my tongue-teeth

one by one

by one