Sirens Often Eat Out Of Hatred, Not Love. So When The Sailor Girl Asked The Siren If She Found Her Appetizing,

A letter to my father,

I behave youthfully around you, happy go lucky and thoughtless at times. This isn’t because I am those things, but because you let me be. You have never been a parent to me, but a friend. And as your friend, I must tell you:

I behave as if there is nothing the matter, to keep the peace, and not ruin what bond we have, but I have been lying to you, and to myself, that our differing politics needn’t ever intersect. In fact, they intersect every time I look at you and remember the hat you hang in your garage. The red one, with the white letters. I remember you voted against my interests for your own, which foolishly you did, as you will not get your way in the end.

And seeing as I cannot have my father and honesty at once, it seems neither will I.

How pathetic. To spend my days reassuring myself that they are not wasted, all the while wasting them in trivial debates with the wretched thing in the mirror about the very topic. Why I should answer to her, I do not know. She is the opposite of me. Her left eye is where my right is, and her right eye is where my left is. Her hair is parted on the wrong side, her college chosen wrong, her days spent mindlessly, her work set to waste, what a rotten thing she is. I know who I am. And it isn't her. It can't be. Or every poor thing I think of myself would be true.

I’ve whittled myself down,

Suckled myself to nothing like a cough drop in a cheek,

And all I have to show for this betrayal, is a familiar flavor in my mouth to mull over as the adults speak.

I’ve a pin with a ball end pinched between my index and thumb. Ego inflating like boils in me, I pop every idea that I am something good, worthwhile. I wonder if a harsh inner critic is a blessing or a curse as she darts pushpins in my spirit, and punches holes in my identity until I am paper thin and hollow. Light as a feather taken by the slightest idea of greener grass; convinced going anywhere is better than here.

Would you burn the olive trees if you grew them, if you felt their bark wind under your fingertips like locks of hair? Would you poison the water if it quenched your thirst, if you let the river stones touch your sole? You claim the land is yours, and you’re owed every grain of its sand but someone who loves the land would not demolish its beauty so recklessly. If that is how you treat what is yours, I dread the fate of those you call others.

There is no wound so healed that the body does not remember its shape.

If I have learned anything of those who are advanced and civilized, it is this:

New technology is praised even as it wrecks the earth and is manufactured by children’s hands,

Rich men can kill millions so long as they do it sitting in a board room in a suit and tie, but let a poor man kill one rich man and he is quick to die,

Advancements in medicine are available only to those who can afford them, all the brilliance in the world distilled behind a paywall,

In the heat of all their innovation and progress, they have forgotten empathy. And that renders their advancements useless and backward, their intelligence only lets them be more unique in their cruelty.

I know not what to say to her, her wide eyes eat up my thoughts as the sun does water; my head is entranced in cloud when I am with her. Siren on the rocks, I wish only for rainfall so that my skin feels as yours does.

-Diary of a siren

Our screams were never songs. Is that what you’ve been hearing all this time?

-Diary of a siren

There is something so shameful in trying. In putting forth the effort out in the open where the onlookers look and dig their forks into my darlings. My creation dies in the end, regardless. Whether they relish every morsel or idly masticate while their eyes are drawn to the street walkers, just like all that came before her, my idea is eaten. And I am left alone to wonder if a piece of my soul had any flavor worth talking about.