Author's Notes: Though this story is originally intended to be a romantically nostalgic piece, it is open to vast interpretation. Sort of like a poem in story format . . . but not.

The Mermaid
Written by Kay

Barely can I recall (the song). Barely can I see (the eyes). Yet it all comes back to me, trickling through the crevices of my mind. Now, whenever nostalgia envelopes me, I relinquish tears of the past. The dam, overcome by the years and the salt, refuses to hold anymore. Maybe I’m thankful it’s finally broken -- I’ve never considered it (to be so painful, so beautiful).

The days of yore when I had dreamt of the mermaids, those angels of the ocean, are faint. The fantasies were gone with the wind, thieved away in the night by my own phantoms. But now, ever since I've withdrawn to the ocean and glance at the sapphire rivulets glittering with each ripple, the fancies descend like an evening mist.

Empty (spirits) numbers once exemplifying cold induction emerge in flesh and fantasy. Mathematics intermingled with letters -- an interesting hybrid, almost beautiful if used delicately -- sweeten the gentle swell of warmth that makes me light-headed, as if I spin on the heel of my shoe after sipping cloudy rice wine from a wooden cup.

This dizziness had always threatened (to bring to light what had been kept in darkness) my morals, I understand now. It’s what I’ve avoided, as I’ve always avoided darkened alleys and flowering devotion. I’ve always walked the line (dividing sanity and fancy) -- the line as thin and as difficult to see as a single gossamer thread upon crystallized dunes of sand -- never faltering since I left this bay eons before.

Eyes now sharp with reality were then clouded with the milk of fantasy. A shame, for my eyes are forevermore that of a scavenger’s. But I do understand -- after all, I’ve been a scavenger in this world, hungry for the knowledge of things in shadow, desperate for the passion that stroked my cheek then dissolved, giggling like a child of malice.

Desires all but evaporated into the wind long ago, and yet the thrashing surf reminds me of the stories. They are stories of mermaids, those creatures that master the sea with their resilient tails. The stories are just like the waves that bubble and froth with each passing tide, bringing fresh kisses of the ocean breath just for that moment and yet lingering for years to come.

The lines that separate dreams and reality, love and lust, death and life are defined for the mermaids. They dream, they love, they die while weeping salty tears and laughing silver bells. They live in a world separate from mine, forever unwavering under the satin ribbon of truth, for I’ve lingered in the limbo since my mermaid (heart) drowned.

It was a cove of hard onyx and emerald seaweed, smelling slightly of magnolias and soggy rock salt, where water glittered like black diamonds in a small pool architected through centuries of tide. It was then that the mermaid swam to me and first held me in her arms. I remember that her flesh was as slippery as the seaweed flung about the darkened cove, and I grazed the surface of my small tongue over the skin of her collarbone.

She (mourned for the cold, forgotten soul as it ascended the stairway to the vast beyond) tasted like tears, I remember now, but I didn’t know then. All I knew then was that she had impossibly soft hair, inky and black. She was my shield-maiden, protecting me from all the jellyfish stings I had unwittingly endured in the driest of classrooms.

It was an achingly proverbial and simple love, striking in this increasingly complex void in which I’ve (died long ago) lingered. The dreams were as vivid as life: I distinctly remember the warm wave of the salty ocean rippling through my clothes, how tightly her arm snaked around my waist, how quickly and smoothly we wove through the water. We were (ascending the steps toward nirvana) flying without wings, mastering wind and moon with each stroke of water.

Yet (time and tide wait for man) mortals do not contain creation -- I had forgotten that. I had blinded myself to the world, it seemed, for those years that I had suspended from time.

Like a star winking out, the seascape suddenly darkened (as the comet struck the world in which two subsisted). The sand, once silky like the mermaid’s hair, roughened so that my (life) bare feet tore and bled. I remember sitting by the jetty for what seemed like centuries, awaiting the return of the mermaid, straining to hear her sunlit song.

Yet like the deadened shores of Normandy minutes after the erupting novas, only the tide answered unerringly. The ghosts rose from their slumber, ushered by unholy summons, to mingle with the demons of fate.

And when I left, the bayside was but a barren wasteland, cluttered with shattered memoirs and half-spoken whispers.

(x)

Those hours of yester-life emerged and evanesced like wistful dreams, so that I’ve turned to fantasy and temporary insanity for sanctuary. The arithmatician, whose revelations were concise and always correct, became my paramour. I sought (amnesia) cold rationale, not (wistful anamnesis) heady illusions.

Yet even in the sweet wetness of midsummer, after re-affirming time and time again the gossamer path I’ve chosen, my soul would drift back to the sea where I had once chanted with the starfish and waltzed with the seaweed. The moon, indeed, was for lunatics. And when I woke, disturbing the silent body next to mine, I would search the gray glass of the window that always faced the sea and wonder: When will (the warmth return) this heat break?

(x)

I always knew I’d return to the place where I basked in the radiance of childhood magic, but I didn’t know when to (heal) begin the journey. Trekking the forested path was but a bothersome task -- something to put aside for a sunnier day.

The irony is that I stumbled through an ecstasy of rain to reach this long-forgotten cove. And when I finally arrived (wings fatigued and smile weary) the ghosts spiraled homeward bound, into empty crab shells where they fester in mythical sleep.

Suspended in these wizened times, everything is slightly discolored with sepia undertones. The sand shifts unreliably beneath my feet, and no longer do the dolphins leap like silver streaks against the twilight horizon. Silence reigns in this mystical kingdom of forgotten lore.

But the ocean, the ocean that I thought gray and green when I departed, sparkles serenely in washes of majestic purple and darkened cobalt. True, no longer does cerulean reign the kingdom of water as it had when I swam with my mermaid, but I no longer care. Nothing contains creation, and I’ve not done anything for the privilege of that control.

Yet, as I lie down (to rest forever) against this weathered boulder, slightly warmed by the shifting sand blanketing my toes, that brief glimmer against the plum-colored horizon demands my eye.

The song is nostalgic like autumn rain, pondering the return of the spring of innocence and fantasy. But even in my twilight years, engulfed in wistful solitude and quiet, am I not yet completely blinded? What Icarus rises from the billowing surf?

A split second before my eyes close, the (voices of the departed weep in merciful quiet) mermaid’s song drifts in the steady wind, and the reflection of that strong, silver tail wavers in the ocean water.

finis