She recognises me and mocks my work

with her own lithe labour, arms like kisses on the

glass. Smooth as oil

she copies my mop and wringer, slipping her body through

a narrow ring of rubber,

eight handshakes but no hands and yet slim fingers slipping,

sloping elaborately –

she’s a bag of brimming slosh and muscle, swimming.

Love was never like this. She

waits each day, we work, we talk, our conversation

is stately, balletic,

hung with dangling cephalopodic undulations.

If alarmed

she writes her name in water. Food-grifter, shape-shifter,

she paces my walking

powered in the stroll by her three hearts.

My mopping done,

I pass on, she observes me to the aisle-end. Left alone,

she’ll adjust her mantle

like a nun, then settle in a corner on a vigil,

a huddle of knots, in wait.