my legs growing steadier
the closer I get to the shore.
La Bruja del Mar. That’s really what they call me. “The Sea Witch.” Like I’m the only one.
Or like I’m the worst one, which I choose to take as a compliment.
they call me
Sirenita.
“Little Mermaid.”
the youngest of my sisters,
and the only one not smart enough
to keep to the water.
but when your blood carries both the sea
and the land, you can never choose
one for good. wherever you are,
the other always pulls on you.
you never stay still.
They say my mother and I leave a chill on men’s necks as we pass, like a knife of seawater.
We don’t leave anything on anyone. Those men leave their gazes on us, stuck to our skin in a way that only seawater can dissolve.
my sisters pretend they don’t feel it,
the land dragging their hearts toward shore,
the same way I feel the ocean’s gravity
if I stay too long on land.
my sisters pretend our mother and father’s love story
is a simple fairy tale, a love with the depth
of a sea trench, so strong and pure
it let a human man live
alongside a mermaid.
They blame my mother for the way I am. They blame her for walking along the beach when she was pregnant with me, bare feet in wet sand. They blame her for walking there so close to the end that her first pains struck as the surf lapped at her ankles.
They blame her for collapsing into the water.
They blame her for not staying on her feet.
it’s not that I don’t believe it, the story
