i guess i'm an underwater thing

this weekend, i visited a mermaid.

she was a lovely one, on freshwater banks rather than her salt-licked 
sisters, sometimes diving into chlorine blistered pools and peering up at 
me with eyes like crystal like her laugh like ripples. my angel brought me 
to her, supposing i guess that all mythological creatures must meet in a 
story somewhere...so he swooped me up in his wings and carried me off in 
his gray truck and i beat the wind with my violent curls and we pulled up 
in the mermaid's driveway somewhere around the afternoon of 
satyrday...this huge tree-pebble home, a nest extending to the sky, much 
larger than any den i'd ever nestled myself into, and meticulously carved 
into the mountainside...though sad, an empty house, a house full of echoes 
and memories missing the mermaid that was visiting just then...the mermaid 
had a pet goose, a noisy one, that wasn't taking to well to guests and 
continued to hiss at our water-logged bodies and our splashing laughter. 
ah well. we wrapped ourselves up in towels and honeysuckles and danced 
around in bare feet and learned how to play with our food and found really 
neat plastic bibs with lobsters on them and stuffed ourselves sick with 
snow crab and laughed somewhere into eternity...it has been a long time 
since i've laughed like that, laughed until the sky fell in, until my 
spleen exploded, until the pressure was so great against my ribcage i was 
sure it would break...that unending laughter, the kind that attaches 
itself to the end of other people's sentences and continues, and goes on 
and on, never stopping, not even once, not for a breath, and then at a 
knowing look, at a silly glance, it restarts again, the crazy upheaval of 
diaphram against bone, the one perfect use for oxygen...the mermaid and 
me, with our homemade gills. it was wonderous. and then it was the city, 
his city, the one that bore and bled him, the one he breathed until he 
made his way across the world and the deep to anchor himself in some other 
shade of silliness in that asphalt universe i am currently vacationing 
from. this was his story, his chapter, his scrapeskiers and his neon 
lights, all of that which was once his here, in full-colour, bringing 
strangers out of the corridors to come say hello. so we went dancing, or 
swaying in the heat of jazz and loudness, in that sticky place of 
nightclubs and sweat, where eyes are everywhere and hands and minds 
brushing themselves away from someone so close...adjusting is always 
difficult, temporary shutdown, closing the floodgates, trying to keep 
something out of my mind...and its easy when he's there, because i can 
fold myself up in his wings and then nothing and no one exists but him. 
and the mermaid girl on her fourth beer. so we gather ourselves back to 
the shore, to the lake, and sink ourselves in, staring up at the sea of 
stars in this ocean of black, feet outwards and hands in freefall, 
suspended in eternity in a moment, here, in the womb on the earth, where 
the universe began, where i am now. passing through interstellar mediums, 
i throw up my hands and breathe, and everything, just then, cements itself 
in perfect vision inside my head, the planting of the flower that i might 
be, this sleepiness encompassing my dreams, flying. i don't know if anyone 
sees the quiet like i do just then, but it matters not. it is there. 
indescribable, as all miracles are.

the next evening we set ourselves off, me and my sunburnt angel, bidding 
the mermaid farewell for a time...though laughter still rings in my heart, 
that part of me i almost forgot, that part of me i can wear whenever...and 
i am not afraid of drowning, i know i can breathe anywhere, even in his 
city, and especially in his arms. and the mermaid, she smiles, and we 
exchange stories, watching turtles and then watching the ducks hunting us, 
throwing the watermelons in to see if they'll sink. sink or swim, well i 
have these flippers, now, and i don't think i'll be touching the bottom 
anytime soon. if i opened my eyes, i know i could understand so much 
better. but some worlds, i can only guess and dream at. and the underwater 
one is still a mystery to me.

and my sunburnt angel...poor tam, as red as the lobsters we collected on 
our bibs, and nothing helps, not all of the lotion in the world, not 
powder, not cornflakes, not ice cold tubs of water. and everytime my 
fingers reach him, there's this exclamation of pain and i tie myself up to 
keep from touching him and try everything i know to make him feel better. 
to make a friend out of the sun is something not many of us can do. i may, 
sometimes, just because i have my magic earcuff, or just because i know 
why the sun thinks itself ugly. but it has a violent heat, and it burns, 
and it sears, and healing from anything hot takes time, and so we simmer 
and wait through thunderstorms until the hurting stops. while tam brings 
down firestorms into small malt shops with his misdirected magic.

and some weekends, they stick themselves into time slots in your head, and 
they never let loose. you poke at them over and over and still they cling 
to you, in your head, setting down roots, sucking up gray matter and 
photosynthesizing thought. and this was one, this one in which i am 
finally the same age as my angel, this one on the star-studded lake and 
its chlorine candles, this underwater one, will live in my heart forever. 
and the honeysuckle mermaid barefoot on the shore.