cuttlefish

i wish i had your colors

i wish i had your colors

and your second sheet of skin

i was the camera shutter

you were the camera flash

you dressed in camouflage

i- i wore pajama pants

i was a manatee

you- you were a cuttlefish

i moved in cavalcades

lumbering

you could choreograph a ballad in the muscle tissue of a subtle twitch

masquerade as something other

make your outer colors switch

i was sculpted out of slate

you grew out a floral wreath

i had dorsal flippers

you had tentacles and plural feet

and twisted past the crevices and left me by the coral reef

bereft of thought

left abroad

always acted like you spoke the breath of god

concrete cephalopod

of course you couldn't let me in

coagulate your casing when i touched you with my ventral fin

polaroids with exes

you had emerald skin

several tints

watched your soma shimmer when you texted him

i've seen all your colors fade

it's me that you've lost interest in

beige or blue at home but you could toggle through a range of hues

flash an orange smile to men that you were just a stranger to

never was a creature that you couldn't change into

nothing complicated for you mimic octopus

what can't you do

stage yourself an angelfish

change to an electric eel

arrange yourself in halo rings

conduct a charge of sex appeal

never knew if you would give me voltage or a spark

me

a goldfish at the surface

you would puncture through the dark

as you were coming

never knew if you were dolphin or a shark

when you pulled your disappearing act and cast me your good-byes

i would ask you why you're leaving

you would mask it with your lies

selective memory

forget the good

remember when i fucked shit up

hold onto regrets and petty arguments with suction cups

bioluminescent

you would find me if try and hid

giant squid feelers

venom lion fish fins

when you pulled your disappearing act and cast me your good-byes

i would ask you why you're leaving

you would mask it with your lies

practiced master of disguise

go and blast me with your dyes

inkjet smokescreen me with mascara from your eyes

i was nothing like you; i was colorless

maladroit

i saw us as lovers

not as color-coded data points

on some sort of a lab report

i tried to become you

change my patterns often and take us back to what we had before

but i could never do it

you could see through my chromatophores

control me with your colors

what's a sea cow to a matador

you- you were a darter fish

facelift artifice

garter snakeskin scales

shapeshift cartilage

i was the camera shutter

you were the camera flash

you dressed in camouflage

i- i wore pajama pants

i was a manatee

you- you were a cuttlefish

i moved in cavalcades

lumbering