The Only Social Part of the Squid

is the indigestible triangular beak in a kaleidoscope

with other beaks in the belly of a sperm whale.

 

Squid just prefer solitude. But here we are, wearing

squid headpieces, long iridescent tentacles down

 

to our jeans, the two of us a rare squid family.

My daughter hops over to two un-cephalopod-ed girls

 

for hide and seek, and I strike up with their mother:

The gorgeous new jellyfish exhibit! It’s like graceful

 

entrails in slow motion. It’s sunset hair. She says she

isn’t their mother. Their mom, her sister-in-law, recently

 

killed herself. So she’s filled the days with museums

and movies and the aquarium with its half million

 

gallons of water. One girl lies under a bench, still

as a stingray save her chest rising and falling.

 

The movers are packing up her house. The woman hides

a tissue in her fist. Her other niece sneaks behind

 

a larger-than-life cardboard reef shark, but my squid isn’t

with her. The exhibits have closed, so I duck under

 

velvet ropes and wander down ramps. Once I’m underwater,

I speak to a darkness I know all too well:

 

They’re beautiful. Somewhere my only child twirls

with tentacles like handlebar streamers. I know the mother

 

is here watching her wide-eyed girls, their fingers

and breath against foot-thick glass. Any ghost would be.