When We Believed in Mermaids

by Barbara O'Neal

The human body is a delicate, amazing creation. It takes almost nothing to completely destroy it, and yet it takes a lot. Most of us manage to stay on the planet, in our bodies, for seventy or eighty years, all of us amassing scars along the way, each one with a story.

Maybe I’m looking for answers. To what, though? Everything that ever happened to anyone, ever? Life is sometimes just wretched; that’s all.