Dreams from a Parallel Universe

One night, I dream I am an
Octopus. My womanly hips bulbous and
slick with tentacles like serpentine
limbs made to seize
and flex.

I dream a man wakes up
and takes the rollers from his hair, and
stuffs his feet into three-inch heels,
and feeds the baby
with his breast
and cooks the eggs, ham, pancakes
sizzling on the stove top
screaming for his attention:
It is 6 AM.

I dream I almost feel sorry for the guy…
my two hopeless human hands
weren’t even enough to service a full man.
I feel the eight tendrils arching hungrily,
beckoned by a world with no limits.

I dream a man stands in the toiletries aisle
paying the tithe for a packed cotton tube,
plugging a red ocean pouring from between his legs.
I am the octopus in the store, eying him tensely,
it’s probably his time of the month…
unsure of how to handle a man
when he bleeds.

But he bleeds like an oil spill,
a sea of vermillion flushes over the earth—
and it seeps into groundwater.
The land is an ocean, red with
octopuses spangling the sea.

I let out a small laugh in my sleep, and

I wake once more, in my silver cage.