you built our Gabriola
home with them: your hands
like squids wrapping
tentacles around every stubborn two-by
you worked all day until you stopped
high up on the roof because the salt
of your sweat was in your eyes
and said that’s enough for now

and you floated
back down the rungs of the ladder
and put your squid on my hips
only now they were anemones
with soft tickler hairs
swaying back and forth in the current

and when I closed my eyes I
could hear the salt that had dug
itself into the hard molluscs on them

all night in our tidal pool
bed I watched them twitch
as your blood
was pulled by the moon.