My Octopus Lover and I Mull Togetherness

When I come to him weeping
he thinks I’m making more
ocean and takes it as 
my gift to him, as if I could 
raise the waters high enough
to flood the world’s dry places.
His fantasy: that we dwell
in an underwater my-house,
houseplants all seaweeds
waving in the current, fireplace,
granted, less useful—the stove
too, and the central heat—
but everything else more 
or less functioning as it did.
So we can sit on the couch
and watch schools of fish 
glide above the coffee table,
and when rays swoop down
huddle under the bed
holding hands till they lose
heart and flutter off. He thinks
the toilet might still work,
we can get a small oxygen
tank for the cat, and mostly
all will be as I’ve always
known it, just with space 
for him there. He doesn’t 
know, ask, or think to ask
why I’m weeping, but he is,
my octopus, a perfect eight-
winged angel: because it’s
for want of just this, the worlds
of he and I blended, so that 
we may be somehow 
wholly together, yet remain
somehow wholly ourselves.