Lily and the Octopus

by Steven Rowley

know Lily about as well as I think it’s possible to know another living thing, so I notice it.

I fell fully in love with a creature I had known for all of nine hours.

“You, in fact, chose me.”

I sit next to her on the floor, my legs tucked close and my arms wrapped around them, and I make some of the eye rain she likes, but not too much. I don’t know where the rage first takes root—my heart, my gut, my brain, my soul—but it has been metastasizing over the four days since the octopus first came calling.