Magnapinna

The other week
when I freaked out
about the prospect of you joining lives
with someone who only wants to make you into a carpet
and a pretty wedding ring,

someone who has hit you,
who has locked you in your home and hidden the key -

someone who tells you terrible things
and affirms only your most painful anxieties,

who can give you sweetness and closeness
and rip it all away
unless you obey -

someone who has not once shown the ability
to sacrifice her own desires for something you want or need -

it took more than breathing to calm down,
and more than you feeding me
vegan spring rolls you saved
and made special for me.

On my way to soothing myself,
lying mixed up with a slumbering You,
I remembered the Magnapinna squid.

Some dude working an ROV
checking on an oil rig
had suddenly caught on camera this thing --
still but for its gently undulating
alien head,
with arms impossibly long, suspended there,
the most terrifying, shocking thing one could hope to find
at the bottom of the ocean.

It was like a monster
only in the sense of the power it held.
It made my stomach sick to see it
because of the absolute peace
and certainty
in the way it just floated.
It seemed to embody the word
om,
seemed to stare back into the camera
like a living gateway to some unimaginable life.

Whatever storm was raging on the surface of my soul,
I left it there
and swam down.
I found my squid
deep in the depths of me,
and just stared at it for a while.