The Last Mermaid

~ 60 ~

She  wonders whether she will ever find her way back to the ocean. She feels like a mermaid stranded ashore. Ever since he left her, she's felt eternally thirsty. 

She longs for the bright coral and colorful fish, the endless caverns to explore, and his dark, tumultuous waves caressing her, entrenching her, and eventually killing her. She knows that, when they discover what she is - they'll drag her back to that world of metal - 

Children entranced by computer screens, joggers running busily along the beach, planes flying overhead, long stretches of golf courses, cars rushing to work, the "busy, busy, 'is this all there is?'" They need her, you see, to give advice to. She knows the mirror to their problems, and then they run away, complaining of her immaturity. 

They bore her with their thick, southern drawls, talking of politics and business. "This is reality, and reality is uninteresting" they say,, as they suck the water out of her into a drain where she can no longer find it. 

"Best to lower your expectations." Perhaps she's always been the jaded bride, whom after her groom leaves her at the alter, stumbles out onto the sand, carrying leaves and twigs in her hair and on her dress, holding a bottle of half drunk wine, throwing dead jellyfish back into the ocean, crying about how "people always look down on things they don't understand." Stumbling along the coast at night as the hotel lights blaze through the window, showing people watching football games and searching the computer.  

When she sees her lover in bed with another woman, she throws herself back into the sea. The air nymphs take pity on her, inviting her to be a daughter of air. 

"Your stories will bring wild imaginations to people all around the world, and your poems will evoke entire academies of learning." It's fun for a while to float among the stars, strange people, mountains high, and technologies beyond the imagining. After a while, she notices the sea again - the dark eyes of her lover, the palpitations of her heart, the deep yearning in her belly. Without love, she is nothing. 

Now, she is once more the sea foam drifting among the waves. 

Think of her when you need help with repressed grief, unrequited love, and dead dreams. Her lover will eventually meet her again one day - his ashes and her foam mixing into the blissful sea.