AKATALĒPSIA

By Alice Weatherley

I was stuck to garden stones when you read to me 

Of unruly octopuses slipping captivity; thrusting past

Boundaries and squeezing into tank pipes, aquarium 

Teapots, even nearby oceans, hauling themselves

To freedom. Swimming in your influence, a need

Bubbling up in me, I asked for a look

At this book, pushing an arm 

Through streaking sunlight. I found 

And recited back facts about death. The octopus lives

A brief life: those in decline turn from red to white, 

Refuse play, cease to eat, and become dull, devoid of

Intensity. Some say when females reproduce they commit

A slow, violent suicide: slam limp selves into rocks – 

Chew their limbs to bits. That night we went to bed

Fanatics. Held like precious, excavated marble

In the dead arms of someone younger I found us

An essay. I wake and worry

I am mythologising you. In the museum lift, floating

Up five floors to the amphoras, you blink and insist

My hair under the light looks like flaming tentacles

Unfurling, embalming bare shoulders. Pinching a curl, 

You pull: a test of my buoyancy. I know we both know

The octopus tastes with its skin but we do not

Say it out loud.

ALICE WEATHERLEY is a writer from Middlesbrough. She holds a BA in English from the University of Cambridge and is currently pursuing an MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies at Trinity College Dublin. Her poetry has been published in Propel Magazine, Icarus, and The Mays Anthology.

Art by Shrivaani Poddar