no, i think they knew there weren't mermaids. i think they knew there weren't centaurs, either. i've been on the ocean; i've been deep in the woods. i've seen the way the earth can turn, suddenly and soft, into an alien planet with terrifying claws. there is-enough to be actually-afraid of; the hiss of something slipping into the nightblack water. the eerie, impossible silence of something in the forest looking-back.
but the other day i stood on a dock and a little girl asked me are mermaids really real? and i thought about how when i was 10 i almost drowned - i've written too many poems about that moment now - and how it felt to be 10 before that, with my long hair streaming down my back, having mermaid powers in fish ponds.
and i thought about her question and i thought about the truth. i thought about what we already know lives in the deep, with their white bodies and rapier teeth. i thought about bacteria that can coat your dog's fur in inches. i thought about the trash island somewhere out there, killing the fish.
and i told her: yes, absolutely. i saw one once, actually. and she looked a little bit like you! how amazing, and how funny.
delighted, astounded, mystified, she put her fingers in the water and began to sing about fish and swimming.
it's okay, for now, after all, for her to believe in magic. there will be time to learn about pollution in the fall. for now, it is summer, and her knees are scabbed, and we will have popsicles later, and the hardest choice she will have to make is between ice cream flavors.
and it is okay, for now, if i can keep passing along the stories of a better world. so much of the ocean remains unexplored, after all. and who knows what i actually-saw in the night; it was so dark and it could have been a seal or it could have been a selkie - i haven't gotten my eyes checked in a while.
and who knows. maybe atlantis was not a history but a prophecy. maybe it was not-sank but instead hasn't-yet-existed. and maybe we will wake up and touching water will give us fish tails and gills and we will be able to control the weather and i could kiss my girlfriend while we swam towards paris, our hair streaming down our backs and our laughter in bubbles rising.
it is summer, for now. we might as well believe in magic.
origamiaround
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
