When We Believed in Mermaids

by Barbara O'Neal

This is why we have funerals. We desperately need to see the truth for ourselves, see that loved one’s face, even if it’s marred. Otherwise, it’s just too hard to believe.

I’m so hungry I almost want to bite him. So I do bite him, his shoulder. The size of his body excites me. His tongue excites me.

But once a cheater, always a cheater in my book. Men who cheated kept cheating.

As we come together, so sweetly, so perfectly, as if our bodies were carved of one piece of wood,

Ice cream is a weakness,

“Jesus wept,”