The+Mermaid

The Mermaid There was a girl who was meant to be a mermaid. With her long, flowing yellow hair and wide, rather somber blue eyes. Always looking so sadly out the window. Wanting to leave this world for another. The children whispered about her, she’s so quiet… and they whispered, she’s so odd… They whispered about the deep scratches on her porcelain skin. They whispered about the dark bruises hidden away. And so the girl would run from the whispering school and to a nearby pond where the birds sang and the trees swayed. Here the shadows were forbidden. The shadows didn’t scare her. The bruises didn’t ache. The scratches didn’t sting. Her voice was heard instead of being hoarse from shrieking and crying. And the little mermaid girl could lay down, peacefully, on the soft green grass. And when the sun faded, the dark would call out to her for the shadows stalked her. And so the mermaid girl ran and ran using clumsy feet that should have been a tail, until she returned to the gray house. That cursed gray house where the worst shadow lived. The mermaid girl was too fragile for this earthly world. Too pure to gasp another breath of that tragic place. Her little bones were too light. Her heart too frail. Her body too young. It took so long for her classmates to realize that the quiet, odd girl had not been there. The bruises… they cried… the scratches… They ran the same way she had, through the forest, and to the small pond. The clearing was silent, except for the ravens. The other birds didn’t sing. The trees didn’t sway. But the girl was there. Sleeping in the water, finally able to close her eyes.

Haley Littmann