I’m Afraid I Divvied Away All Intelligent Thought Ages Ago, The Way One Wraps Dinner In Terry Cloth

I will be myself, and if the world rejects that then I will reject the world, and make my own place. I will not be lonely there, because I know there are others just like me, struggling to reconcile the desire to belong and the desire to be.

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

I belong to my animals as much as they belong to me. I am no owner, and they are no beasts.

What could you have if you let yourself dream? If you didn’t squash anything that shone under that worker’s boot of yours?

It is easy to be liked, far too easy. I have never been so liked as when I looked in the mirror and saw nothing.

Sweet thing didn’t bite me nearly hard enough to hurt me, though not for lack of trying. She thought I was dead, but she’d just woken me with her nibbling. My eyes dragged down to the source, a head full of spiked black hair, with droopey triangles flat on her forehead form being above water. Her eyes were black as well, I was transfixed by them, how her pupils devoured her face. The sharp point of her nose dug into my knuckle as her mouth inched it’s way up my finger. Our eyes met. She inhaled sharply and pushed herself away from me, her eyes warbled with shock, and then settled down to worry. I wasnt worried though. Not for a moment.

-Diary of a Siren

My skin prickles hot; I asked the old man a question and he answers with a story so far unrelated I had to turn around and see just who in the hell he was talking to, because it certainly wasn’t me! Yes or no will do just fine, I kept hearing myself say in my mind, my voice gentle like a kitten’s fighting tooth and nail to drown out his gravely droning on about airplanes and the war. Outwardly I must’ve been screeching fake niceties and not pulling off my polite half assed head nods because his eyes were wide, and albeit dull as ever but he seemed perturbed. And that’s saying something because men like Robert don’t seem anything, they’re simply half dead elderly men roaming the earth to challenge God. Look how long I’m living! Keep knocking Jesus, I’m not opening the door! I can’t imagine being a gold digger and accidentally marrying a Robert. Undying so much as they are unriveting. Later I looked in a mirror and saw my face, still plastered up fake happy from our little conversation if you could call it that. I understood instantly why he seemed so off-put by me, I looked clinically insane. This fake it til you make it crap has got to work for somebody but it is undoubtedly not me. Unfortunately God put me here to be as authentic as possible—to punish me of course.

Everything is fine.

Do you actually believe that or do you just want to believe it?

Is there a difference?

Sirens often eat out of hatred, not love. So when the sailor girl asked the siren if she found her appetizing, she shook her head with a tight lipped grin. The human took it as rejection, her eyes falling to her hands and picking at the callouses she found unsightly, not understanding she had just shown her affection for her. That hiding one’s teeth was a gentle act of favor the merfolk used.

Life is happening, life is happening all the time. I can’t seem to catch it in between my fingers, elusive as rays of light. I cannot keep it high in my lungs, it leaves me like a breath. I am a meager stone in a fast coursing river and I watch what erodes me away. Life is cold. Invigorating. I wish I could hold its hand and study its face before it escapes me again.