A squid can recognise itself in the mirror
But tonight it is standing in for one of us.

Vibrio fischeri, love—
Your acid sugar in exchange for good lighting.
Teeming bacteria in your mantle cavity
Each a luminous speck, a dupe
Of the downwelling starlight.

Disbodied for safe passage
           This is old news.
           30 light years apart, my
                                   3 hearts fit to burst.

— Flis Holland