Chlorine

by Jade Song

You are not here of your own free will. You are here because I desired you first. I lured you to me using my intentional charms: my ethereal beauty, my siren song, my six pack, my tail with scales embroidered in flesh.

I was convinced the two girls were free, freer than I could ever be. I envied their ability to slip through those men’s grasps. I saw their evolution as a gift, so they could play in the water forever, not beholden to men’s needs or a moralist God’s schedule.

But let me be clear, so you cannot misconstrue my motives: while my journey may seem lonesome, I was never alone in my scars. I was the sole chlorine mermaid on my team, but I was not the only girl to self-mutilate. As proud athletes, it was expected our mutilations were a natural course of

action to reach peak condition. Some cut. Some bulked. Some purged. It’s all the same. Together we girls molded our bodies and selves into what Coach Jim wanted. What we wanted.

Back then, I was a girl, a body of water, a liminal state of being, a hybrid on the cusp of evolution.

I was surprised to discover how good it felt to be deemed special for my body.

As a mermaid, I now recognize how winning places the self within a construct of hierarchy over other bodies—a false construct. There’s no victory when someone else loses.

He disappeared, and my heart cracked in recognition at our severance. A human tie of mine, broken.

On the day of my first period, I was more dead doe than human woman. Was womanhood always so violent, raw?

Cathy’s fingers curling around my hips the way a comma promises a sentence it can continue.

It is the women, the genderqueers, the mermaids, who are hard. Worth the battle.

Please understand what I did was out of aching loneliness—the only reason people ever do anything.

From them, I learned I could seize my body back from those who sought to destroy it.

She always tried her best to keep me happy even when she tried to destroy me.

The brief euphoria of becoming a magical creature would never be enough to sustain me through a life reduced to woman.