When it’s demon cephalopod versus schoolgirl, it should be obvious
whose eyes to take. Nothing is more frightening than looking

and loving what you see. Nothing is sexier than a rumor
of shredding you can pornhub with saliva and thirsty nerves.

I’m a net teeming with pervy fingers, reaching for anything
that will bite me back, any promise of stoppage—

A cyborg woman touches herself for three reasons:

1. to inspect the machinery for errors;
2. to convince herself she is a mammal;
3. to pull herself apart.

Each tentacle of an octopus contains brain matter and a personality.
Fun fact: all my children-arms want to fuck each other. Okay,

so I am both the woman holding the camera and the woman
being opened by it—nothing special about that.

I am only a cuttlefish lying open-jawed under the sand,
a squid flashing red as it pulls a fishgirl into its beak. I am

just trying to sleep. To feed. To fill
myself and grow larger from it.

Or: I am only trying to slither back into my first skin.

Or: I am only trying to remember how it felt not to leak.

Franny Choi, “Shokushu Goukan for the Cyborg Soul” from Soft Science. Copyright © 2019 by Franny Choi. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books, www.alicejamesbooks.org.