confessed my friend, one night.
Not best friend or girlfriend.
Not even shoulder or pillow.
But an eight-legged, ship-sized,
no-one’s-ever-seen-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale-before cephalopod
that lives deeper than the dives of sperm whales,
where the water, because of physics,
would crush the human body
like a butterfly.
What are the responsibilities
of being someone’s kraken?
I wanted to ask.
Would you terrorize sailors
and pirates, shake their great
fat jewels to the seafloor?
What would all of that mean, set
against the panorama of real life?
And who would want to have a face
that people run from, screaming?
Then the lamplight softened me like snow,
and I thought, perhaps we should all
be a legendary creature for each other:
a Loch Ness monster, a mermaid,
a yeti, a gnome.
A sasquatch with braided fur
and woodberry eyes.
Even a kraken
that leaves its desert depths
in search of thunder,
beauty,
flight.
