eight ways to be gone.
A pearl beneath the surface.
“pearl white” makes an octopus into a love interest, which is already a fairly ambitious decision. The pearlescent skin, ink, moonlight and many arms are seductive before they begin to resemble something less easily escaped.
Eight arms offer an unusually convincing image of being held. They can surround someone with warmth and attention, but they can also close every available exit. The song is interested in how little the physical arrangement needs to change for comfort to become confinement, or for the memory of comfort to become painful.
As the images grow darker, the sea begins to feel less like a place to disappear together and more like a place that might keep what disappears. Shrouds, ink and the repeated memory of beauty move the song away from its initially outlandish romance without making that romance unreal.
The strange creature remains beautiful. That is part of the problem, and possibly part of the reason the narrator keeps looking.
Are the eight arms supposed to be comforting or frightening?
I think the same embrace can mean different things at different moments. Eight arms are lovely until you decide you want to leave and discover how many of them there are.
Why does the sea-creature imagery become so mournful?
It starts as an almost ridiculous love story. The images are still the same by the end; what has changed is the person remembering them.