so here I am:
webbed hands, ratted hair,
lungs gasping for something that isn’t air
daughter of the sea.
on the list of things you didn’t expect:
the light, gentle, bluish tint of my skin,
something pulsing beneath that and in
my veins there is blood but it isn’t blue.
listen to me
and I’ll tell you:
pretty things can’t swim.

give me your storybooks, and your startled looks,
they are almost as wrong as your history
and I didn’t sing, I can’t sing, the sailors heard music in their own heads,
driven mad by the sea
so imagine every generation before me handing down the inheritance
of crazy in the bloodstream.
losing it is in my genes, sweetheart.

the waves pull you under a different kind of reality-
I need these razor sharp teeth, what else tears into tendons?
I need my nails like knives, to catch what can’t be mended,
put me back into the water or I’ll put you into your grave
gasping for the air up there, with your golden head of hair,
believe me, pretty thing,
some things just can’t be saved