with gentle pity.
it’s proof that I never stay
long on land or in water,
that I’m always slipping
from one to another
like human girls climbing out
of bedroom windows at night.
Everyone says the way I was born explains it, why I slip into the depths of Abulón Cove as comfortably as a bath. Why I can stay down there as the fire of sunset gives way to the purple night and the silver of the moon. Why my mother doesn’t demand I’m back at the bed-and-breakfast by a certain time.
She knows I always come home the minute the ocean lets my heart go.
And she knows that lately, the ocean’s had more of it than usual, that it lives on the floor of the sea in pieces, like a broken shell.
She worries about me. But she doesn’t say it. She knows there’s not really anything either of us can do about it.
everyone peering from between their shutters
thinks they know why I come on land.
they think I’m a lovelorn girl, eyes as wide
and innocent as they are dark.
they think I’m like my mother,
in love with a human boy.
but from what I’ve seen,
most human boys,
most human men,
aren’t like my father.
my father lost his heart
to my mother
the moment
he saw her.
but he did not approach her,
did not speak to her
until she spoke first.
and when my mother asked him to,
he gave up his world for her.
