Aubade with Deep Sea Footage by Emily Lawson
"How can I begin to say what it meant to me?"
Aubade with Deep Sea Footage
by Emily Lawson
Do you know about the blanket octopus? If we met while I had cancer, I made you watch the video. Among us somewhere in the galactic black. First, pale in the cruel beam of the submersible, her head glows bulbous, like blown glass—then wings swoop out to drop the shimmering mantle: falling silk, slow-motion arabesque in spectral pastel—can you believe this?—like a hex cast, or a chant sung through the gloom. Trailing yards of filmy gossamer, a bubble’s swirling membrane. Wielding, as weapons, as whips, tentacles ripped from a Portuguese Man O’ War. Think of that. Hovering like a Venusian spacecraft. How can I begin to say what it meant to me? That I had gone so long without knowing. That she was not washed ashore somewhere, deflated, gelatinous, a wet plastic bag—not this one—but soaring, a living aurora. And here on Earth, where I slept and vomited. That childhood’s magic rippled, rare and luminous, through that footage. Lighting my cadaverous face. This morning, in remission, I woke from the vision I had memorized, then forgotten, knowing I might choose it, if I could, as my last: actual alien, actual angel, the color of sunrise, of morphine, dream worlds, melting absinthe, orchids, lip gloss, innards, gumdrops, moonstones, oil slicks: this nebula warping through the infinite underworld—a kind of breathing, a kind of weeping—flung untouchable satin, seraphic, labial, ethereal. Just to live to see you, O phantom, O weird mysterium—it’s enough.
First published in Three Hearts: An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry (World Enough Writers, 2024).
This poem feels like someone trying to put into words the exact moment something beautiful kept them alive.
The blanket octopus isn’t just an animal here it’s a shock of wonder arriving in the middle of sickness and fear.
You can sense how desperately the speaker held onto that image, like a small light in a very dark room.
The contrast between the glowing creature and the reality of vomiting and sleeping through treatment is heartbreaking.
The language spills out in waves colors, textures, comparisons like someone grabbing every scrap of beauty they can remember.
It reads like a love letter to awe, written by someone who needed awe more than anything.
The octopus becomes an angel, an alien, a reminder that magic still exists somewhere, even when the body is failing.
You feel how fiercely the speaker memorized that vision, storing it like a secret they could return to.
It’s messy, emotional, breathless but that’s exactly why it feels so true.
A reminder that sometimes one impossible, luminous moment is enough to pull someone back toward life.
So beautiful.