. becoming a mermaid

the thing about mermaids, i must explain, is that they are not always born in the sea.

i.

nothing.
it was nothing, she reminds herself, leaning precariously over the prim white balcony. the breathing ocean moans and sighs, sighs and moans against the fragile coastline.

all of this is nothing and it is everything.
she takes one, two, three bitter sips with a wince and leaves the salt air to find her sterile, cold bedroom. the new year is cursed, she decides as she falls limp and helpless into the wild mess of sheets that swallow her small body whole.

(she closes her eyes and imagines the pale blankets to be rugged waves, breathing and gasping, gasping and breathing across, around, inside of her bones. they pull her deeper, deeper, deeper, like the myths of once-mermaids dissolving into sea-foam. she can almost feel herself become the ocean, when…)

ii.

real or illusion; was it a memory, a dream, a hallucination?

"why?" he had asked her.
"everyone deserves to know if they are loved," she had replied.

the silence was bone-rattling.

but doesn't it matter?
doesn't it matter that she could feel him from across the room?
doesn't it matter that she found his hand in the dim absence of light?
doesn't it matter that she reached out to him when the clock struck twelve?

iii.

perhaps what had mattered was that he pulled away.

four, five, six heaving gulps and
she is liquid,
she is not real,
she is gone.

isn't this how you like her?
eyes closing in alternation with chasing the violent ceiling fan. mascara creeping down the corners of her eyes.
you tore everything right out of her chest, ripped off her mermaid-scales and watched her bleed.
she is a grotesque sight among these precious porcelain dolls--who wants a silly little fish when you can have a princess?

and what is it like to be lovely? (she cannot recall.)

iv.

congratulations darling,
you've got her right where you want her:
bare-boned and defenseless, she's not meant for this rigid oxygen.

you've got it all planned out:
collected her saltwater tears for years,
filled up that little glass fish bowl you will store her in and place her (so carefully!) atop your nightstand,
carry her with you wherever you go,
an afterthought for your thoughts thereafter.

what a unique decoration!

(every night before you go to sleep she begs,
don't forget me, please, bruise me and break me but whatever you do, please please please don't forget me.)

someday,
    you
    will
    drown
    her.