The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus

by Emma Knight

Labatt Blue

Pen had been trained to breathe less air than everyone else, whereas Alice had never once in her life felt the need to apologize for taking up space.

“You’ve gone quite pale,” Freddie said. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not dead or anything. Just keeping a low profile. A persona non grata. More Banksy than Banquo.”

“Xenia was the reciprocal understanding that unknown visitors must be welcomed as friends—bathed, clothed, fed, and offered safe passage to their next destination—and, in return, that travelers must not threaten their hosts, but must instead bring them fresh conversation, and news of the outside world.”

There is little room for a mother’s self-interest in the narrative. There is only the selfish monster and the octopus.”

“What do you know about the life cycle of the common octopus?” Margot asked.

“The mother who insists on keeping that inner self of hers alive is monstrous. No one blinks when a father continues devoting himself to whatever it is he most wants to accomplish in this world. But a wife and mother who has priorities of her own and refuses to put them last? Hers becomes a life of conflict, between who she is and what is expected of her. Society deems her selfish and unnatural. If she lets herself believe it, she’s doomed, and so are her children.”

Getting to choose for oneself is a gift so vanishingly rare that one must never squander it.”