Semelparous
by Isabella Ragsdale
We try to respond as quickly as possible
to irrevocabilities: would it be rude
to ask which heart you store your love in?
Enteroctopus dofleini, shredded masses of muscle,
cousins of the soft tongues our mothers
settle our names upon for the first time--
Wriggling detonation of tentacular tissue--
place them in moving boxes, pray
that their larvae reach maturity
safe enough to open them. We search
for certainty at the keel of open-ocean vessels
and find nothing but rolling, turning tide.
Every octopus meets her child
hand-in-hand with her death. Her mouth
is the only hard part of her body