Kraken

The ship stopped being a ship. Tentacles came out of the black water, the kraken taking the mast, the rail, the cry. Arms, not a coil. Suckers on wet wood. People who lived told it with their hands still open, a kraken gift of that grab. It finds them again in kraken playing cards that stick to the table, in a kraken notebook whose page curls as if from salt, in a kraken postcard of the tentacle and the broken spar. The water closes. The arm does not let go.