Old tides cling like foam

Mermaids shed what drags them deep

New waves call me home

Beneath the wavering glass of sea and sky, 

where tides remember everything they roll by,

mermaids sing their pain into song, 

guiding broken currents where they belong. 

Below blue veils, where moonlit mermaids glide,

they weave lost tides and swim in stride,

where moonborn myths reside,

til every drifting ship and heart runs wide. 

But even in water heavy and cold,

there is a quiet refusing to fold,

a flicker beneath the weight of the deep blue dark,

a stubborn, small, persistent spark.  

The past clings like seaweed to skin,

knotted as a tidal wave that pulls you in, 

a sly, surging current dressed as truth beneath a familiar fin.

Mermaids know what it means to break, to carry more than the ocean can take.

Still, they rise where the light returns. 

That hurt is real, but so is the shore,

and nothing broken stays that way evermore. 

You learn not to drown in what once pulled you down to the deep,

somewhere between salt and starlight, you begin to breathe,

a siren unshackling from the pull of the undertow’s keep,

where you shed your shame and sing with the sea,

rising through the breaking blue,

where you finally learn to break free.

*This piece is dedicated to the survivors of sexual assault, in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. 

May every broken current become a path back to the surface, and every voice find its song again.*