Today's poem is Squid Season by Leigh Ellis. It is read by Julia Bouwsma.
Squid Season
I can’t remember when I realized I was trans exactly,
But it was probably sometime during squid season.
Either July or August,
I can’t remember.
"ey only come to the surface to feed at night,
"e squid.
Summer nights always feel more in#nite,
A blackness you can disappear into
A blackness you can lose your body in.
"e silken surface of the ocean
Was a portal to another dimension,
A dimension where things like squid existed.
Three things that could be found on the dock (any midnight during squid season):
- "e briny t-shirts of whichever cousins were around that day, shed in the darkness to prove something (I don’t know what).
- "e disemboweled squid, spoils from the other dimension.
- My feet.
Five characteristics of a squid catcher:
- Never afraid of the all-encompassing darkness. I lost my soul in that squid-catching darkness.
- "e boys never lost anything.
- Ribcages like rungs of a ladder.
- Jawlines that could cut (everything about a squid catcher could cut).
- A special sweaty sheen rendering them glow-in-the-dark under the moonlight.
- Must be able to become one with the squid.
Reflections:
I never was much of a squid catcher. Instead, I was a squid watcher. I watched as blood spilled on reflective countertops and olive oil was heated past its boiling point and I thought about how my sweat didn’t smell like the sweat of the squid catchers.
"ere are many boys who I would gladly gut, like one of their squid spoils, just to exist within their sun-soaked
sweat-marinated
moonlit
skin.