April 10, 2025
 |  21 Comments

She rose from the tide like a secret  
unearthed, 
hair tangled with wreckage and weed, 
and eyes lit with the pale fire of distant storms. 

The sailors first felt  
her to be a miracle, before  
they proclaimed  
mermaids as nothing more than a curse. 

They did not see the salt in her veins, 
how it burned when they spoke  
of land, of hearths  
and harvests, 
of promises that dry out in daylight. 

She listened; head tilted like a gull  
on the wind, 
but her silence wasn’t surrender—  
rather it was the pull of darker currents 
twisting through her blood. 

Her face held the hush of forgotten tides, 
cheekbones carved by moonlit currents, 
lips tinted with the bruises of lost storms, 
and eyes— 
eyes like deepwater glass, 
reflecting every ship she ever dragged under. 

The sea stitched her bones together, 
whispered in the hollow of her throat, 
taught her how to coerce men  
into forgetting 
why they ever wanted to return. 

Now she drifts through shipwreck dreams, 
where lanterns float in brine-lit twilight, 
and laughter curls  
like smoke in the deep— she hums lullabies  
that taste of rust and waits  
for the next soul to sleep too close. 

There is salt in her veins, sweet as longing,  
sharp as regret— 
a spell of slow unraveling, 
delivered in a voice too lovely to resist. 

 

 

 

Photo credits: Pinterest 

For my mermaid series this year during Napowrimo/April Poem-a-Day Challenge 💙

Posted for Open Link Night #382 (+Live) @dVerse Poets Pub