Mermaid

 

Strange calls in the night
songs unsoothing the soul
the place where the gods had left
I had arrived

I was done, so done
I was ready, at last
I unwaxed my ears
sank my sail on the skerries

woke up tangled in kelp
a mermaid glaring over me

both wondering why
I was still breathing

I asked her to sing again
and again until I drowned

I saw all my pain and grief
manifest and explode
but it didn’t kill me

I taught the mermaid
heartwrenching songs
and singing she spun me
round and round
down to the bottom

but I wasn’t drowning
so I forged a blade
for her to spear my heart
opened my shirt wide
showed her the beating flesh

she stabbed at it, twice, thrice
her nails clawed it out of my chest
squelching blood in her angry fist
beads of pearls on the sand at our feet

but I wasn’t dying

we embraced and shed tears
we tried a million different ways
time lost importance, even for her
she consoled me every time
I woke up breathing

something in me wouldn't let go

one day as she held my head
on her lap, she stared at me
for so long days passed
weeks perhaps and
in time she said I love you
and plunged in the ocean

I waited for her, and waited,
suns and moons in harvests aplenty
she never swam back to me

the ache, the ache was so great
that finally the wild went silent
and I closed my eyes