Chlorine

by Jade Song

Mermaids would rather eat four bowls of pasta than a man—though a man does taste good, mermaids prefer not to waste precious stomach volume on such non-nutritious fare, for a man is not sustenance but an occasional dessert.

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.

I never said yes, but I never said no, and the indefinite limbo of maybe is where regret and doubt and confusion reside as neighbors, forever reduced to the monotony of a clouded memory, the mind traveling in never-ending cul-de-sac circles.