The way Sheherezade tells it, a djinn turned me into an octopus. I stretched my tentacles each to their limit, flailing, feeling for something to tell me the color and texture of my skin. Another way Sheherezade tells it, that’s how I disappeared.
Sometimes, I wonder if I reached so far and and so fully that my each and every atom stretched farther and further until, poof, I was dust. Less than dust and more: I was the ground.
Before I was the ground you walk on, before I was an octopus to your eyes, I wanted to be the wind: Eyes closed, arms stretched as if they were more than two. I would play follow-the-leader with the wind. I would listen hard, convinced the wind was telling me a story, convinced the only reason I couldn’t interpret its whispers into words was the kernel of doubt inside my octopus heart that I was made for the water.
