Member Poem

A Mermaid’s Song 

One day I went home searching
for waters deep enough
to drown my problems,
but then I thought of you. 

As a child, in passing,
I learned about you, 
heard your story spoken of
but never told:
how you grew unhappy in yourself,
feared you’d be taken away; 
how you couldn’t bear the shame,
you refused to.
 
Now, I imagine you slip out
and edge your way
along shadows of fading light
through the estate,
hoping no hand will block your path,
no mouth will draw you back. 

I follow you,
sense your relief
mottled by despair,
then advance
into the darkness you now own.

I prowl behind you at a distance,
safe enough to know
you won’t hear my footsteps
over your own heartbeat
and the voices in your head
that pound against their prison walls,
shrieking for release.
 
You tramp for miles,
yet finish in full view
of a home you’ve forgotten:
you stop to turn your back 
on invisible, unwanted hands,
unheard of, drowned-out voices
and shatter the water’s veil.
 
The sea accepts you
the way your life never will,
wrapping you with open arms; 
you go down gracefully,
and for a moment
you sing like a mermaid
at home in her ocean, 
your handful of notes bubbling,
bursting as they brace the air. 
Then your song ends.
 
I listen to the silence
until strange men arrive
to fish the deep waters,
as if they’d always known
it was here they’d find you.
 
But I don’t wait for the boy
who thinks you’re still at home
hiding somewhere from him.
The one who’ll always love
that woman who wanders
up and down the hallway,
from room to room,
as if the house conceals
all of her life’s answers,
and they are just sitting there 
at the back of a press,
waiting to be found.
 
The son who will always remember
the last words you spoke to him, 
and know they were ‘Goodbye’.