Because a male who let himself get too close to her while mating always risked being devoured in some way

Because she could assume the shape of any hollow, whether a solitude, or a martini glass, or a pill bottle, or an exhaust pipe, or an oven

Because she showed behaviors seemingly expressive of human emotions while remaining fundamentally alien

Because she wrapped her innumerable and sentient long legs around me and began to suck

Because she nursed a darkness in her that she spat into a stormcloud of unknowing when she decided to vanish

Because, penetrable everywhere, everywhere depthless, she pulled me in with her vulnerability, a mollusk born without a shell