There Is Something So Magical About The Bus Boy’s Dish Cart. Coffee Cups With Cold Wet Sugar Resting

Algae bloomed on the face of the lake at summer’s height, like zits in bundles of thick and slimy green. The siren that dwelt deep in the lake’s toes could not bear the warm swampiness, it drove her mad. Not only that, but her sailor girl, her shining beacon of hope for food had wounded her in her escape. She felt rotten, her gash festered in hot white patches. No food, no beauty, no cold deep blue lake water to retreat to. All that was left for her was a walk. To find the sailor girl and give her what was coming to her.

If only she understood that I ate her with love, and not hunger.

-diaries of a Siren

I feel pressure to act not as a person, but as woman. To fill every void left by our absence, too little leaders of us, too little comedians of us, too little scientists of us; am I meant to choose what loss to make up for with just my one life?

When I think on 18, and the years that have passed since then, I realize how many little deaths I’ve had in my one life. How many versions of me had to abandon my flesh for ephemerality for me to exist, fettering away. Do they watch me, the way runner up pageant girls watch the winner be crowned with sparkling tears gliding down her cheeks to match her sparkling tiara? Do they envy me? Or do they watch in glum acceptance, the way a parent would as their child draws in spontaneous sharpie all over their orderly white walls. Do they think they know better? Worst of all, do they watch in horror, the way the drug addicted’s partner would as the one they love most spirals down deeper and darker paths? Do they pity me?

Do they think of me at all? How lonely it would be to exist in this world as only one version of me.

Fires burn in the shape of mountains, mere miles from my porch step.

The vegetation cries in red and grey.

My feet in my front yard grass ground themselves there, against the peeking patches of dirt hiding beneath the stiff yellowing blades, as if nature itself is afraid to look at its destruction. I cannot look away.

Our dry seasons get drier, rain will become myth, and water legend. I wonder when it will be my turn to record the destruction, to tell others of what happened to me, and not hear of what happened to others. I wonder if that day will be today.

Unable to find love on land, and told she was unappetizing by her siren of the sea, the sailor girl sought out a lake to mope around in. In the water she so loved and away from the aching salty tide at her ankles, she found respite. But another dwelled in the muck of the lake’s bottom, and rose to meet her. A fresh water siren. Friendly as spit, with water’s wake that tasted of sugar and blood, she invited the sailor girl in. Her hair was red and curled, like a devil’s smile. White freckles sat on her face frankly, like table salt.

She reached out to the girl, and began to braid her long blonde hair, dragging her deeper into the water as she did, with a smile full of teeth.

What secrets I would tell you if it would not take you drowning to hear them

-Diary of a Siren

Indecision, my worst enemy, my bedfellow, my self. I look in the mirror and am met with a series of incomplete paths, loose ends, commitments unfinished. I am torn each way and no way, my spirit has been drawn and quartered. I watch my friends walk the straight and narrow line. I envy their distance, as I sit in the stagnant waters that grow higher and higher. Instead of standing up and walking away from it all, I tread water. You can always stay in the same place, contemplate the same questions, mull over the same potential paths, but the comfort the old routine brings you will fade away. That is one certainty I hold in my bundle of uncertainties. This life I live will get worse.

Have I always sought permission so fervently, or was I confident in myself once? I can’t remember.

Hands wrapped around my neck squeeze tighter. I wonder if this is how I will die. My eyes bulge but I see nothing but black splotches and bright stars. Night has followed me into day, just as I dreaded it would. Just as I dreaded it would.