my mermaid.

I found her.
Amidst this desolate, quiet coast at an abandoned hour.
Washed-ashore she lay alone.
Bare and still between earth and ocean.

I observe her.
Blue veins. Traced. Pearlescent skin encased.
Glacial she lies in a bed of rust-red tresses.
Placed by nature; she wore her hair across her chest as if it were lingerie.

My hands.
Hands of a labouring man. Hard-worked and worn.
Unveil a face; lids lash-less and shut. Lips parted and blue.
Otherworldly, peculiar beauty.

I uncover her.
Under white-water wavelets, a half-immersed frame.
I unravel the body of a woman.
She, part hiding, part inviting. I, utterly divided.

I discover her.
Opalescent curves consume me.
My eyes descend from breast to hip,
To where I thought her thigh would be…

White skin cascades into silver scales. Limbless below; encapsulated within the iridescent flesh of a fish.

_______

I found her.

This daughter of the water; wintered and numb.
The wide-eyed boy in me, recalls tales of the sea.
The grown man in me, rebuffs folklore and legends alike.
But what for the dreamer in me?

I consider.
Though static she lay and innocent she seems in dreamless sleep.
I imagine her life before she met her demise.

Her melody.
Perilous princess of the ocean, whispering to ships and forecasting disasters.
Storm stirring Undine. Nameless sailors have known her song.
Lured to the depths, to watery death-beds by her salt-lipped acoustic.

Her purity.
Ethereal, elemental being. Sienna of the sea.
Perpetual virginity, coveting a craving within me.
To catch her. To quench this thirst. To have made her mine.
The way a man makes a woman his own. I close my eyes, I catch myself. For she is not ‘woman’.

Temptress of the tide. Designed to entice. Untouchable and therefore unimaginable,
to a simple man-of-the-land like me. To the water she belongs. To the oceans that once were. 

__

Aged and grey.
I’ll recover our meeting place.
To lie, die and decay.

I hope our bones are found.
With her arms around.
Me.