Have I Always Sought Permission So Fervently, Or Was I Confident In Myself Once? I Can’t Remember.

Is that why people write? Because no one will listen?

I can’t have children, I’d have too much love for them. I’d bring them up scared of the world like I am. Scared of nothing and everything at the same time.

She caressed her lover’s hair like a bird tending her nest; she saw only futures in the black tangles clinging to her fingers.

It does not matter the school you come from but your passion for your subject. There are private school boys who have never lived life, slept through it as it is but a dream to them who will never know the endless strife of the girl from nowhere trying to make it in this world on grit and determination alone. No money in her pockets to cushion her falls and catch her when she is pushed back from the gates of academia. Only the belief that she will get back up; propelling her like north wind on a shanty sail.

If I must abandon myself to earn their smiles, what are they worth to me anymore.

The girl I was and the woman I am reconcile in tides. Coursing warm waves and biting cold foam, dancing in circles. Becoming one another, and abandoning one’s self in permanence.

Gorging herself, teeth once white steeped in hot and sticky redness, the siren suddenly felt wet coming from her eyes. She jolted backward.

What is this?

Tears. You really liked me didn’t you? The sailor lass muttered, blue eyes now hazed grey with blood loss.

What does that matter? You’re mine you know.

So I am. She said, head tilted back in the pooling sand like a mother’s lap. Something felt natural about this, an unbirth seemed gentler oddly enough, than plain death.

Do you always cry when you eat? She asked, her voice once proud and strong, tapering out

I, I don’t know. I normally do this underwater.

Am I special? To be eaten on the shore? She asked, eyes stuck upward toward a sky the sunset didn’t touch anymore. A cold rush of air carved through the coastline she reposed on, erasing her footprints.

Her heart stopped.

Yes, of course you were. The siren said to no one, her voice wavering for the first time. Of course you were. Tears dropped easier now, and she was certain no sea ever felt so warm, and so foreign to her as this one.

I often love men I know I have no future with. I build castles in the sand near rising tides, and I watch lovingly as they are eroded away by reality. I don’t know why I make things that don’t last. I’m afraid to have something that matters to me I think, that could hurt me more than I want it to.

The sailor girl slides down her boat’s rope the hour after sunset and awaits her black haired siren on the far end of the beach. She fusses with her hair. Tries to part it differently, and then differently again to no avail. She kneels on the shore to get a glimpse of herself under the budding moonlight on the still ocean water. A pair of eyes stays on her, gently raking over her battered, poorly patched clothes. She never was one for sewing. The sea called her. It always called her, to what she didn’t know. Suddenly, the pair of big black eyes in the water rose like fishing bobbins in her reflection, and startled her.

“How long have you been there?” She asked.

The siren smiled coyly, and held a finger up, telling her to hold on a moment.

She disappeared under the water and bobbed back up with something in her hand.

“What’s that?”

The siren rubbed the sand off of it with her thumbs, and held it up. A small abalone hair brush.

What is all this?

It’s bioluminescence. You never seen it before?

No, I haven’t.

It’s little tiny creatures, every time something moves through the water they light up like itty bitty stars.

Do you eat them?

Do I-? No! They’re beautiful!

You don’t eat beautiful things?

You’re still here aren’t you?

-conversations with a siren