Not in the National Geographic sense of a greasy floating thing squiggling around in water that you never wanted to get too close to or stab on your plate with a knife, but definitely a many-tentacled being that could rip your skin off in sheets if you tried to sneak out a window, and a ponderous head swiveling around like a camera in a futuristic prison movie.

My name, hair, body parts, what I found between my legs, arrived like things ordered from a catalogue. I trotted along in plastic boots, stood up, sat down, went in the right doors and out the left.

I liked my skin.

I didn’t mind, I didn’t know I could mind.

Salisbury steak and tater tots—I ate the food, pushed my metal tray back for more.

When I reached the sea on another girl’s bicycle, I felt the tentacles beneath my clothes.