I used to swim for hours

in my grandparents’ pool.

They said I was a mermaid —

skin wrinkled from the water,

hair smelling like chlorine and sun,

refusing to come out.

Water meant freedom then.

But somewhere along the way

water learned your voice.

Now every song sounds like drowning.

Every lyric

is the same old tide

pulling me under —

anger,

heartbreak,

your name hidden between the lines.

People say

your first heartbreak is a boyfriend.

They’re wrong.

Mine was my mother.

You were my first critic,

my first bully,

the first person

who taught me how to shrink inside my own skin.

You body-shamed me out of the water

until the girl who swam like a mermaid

started drowning on land.

Funny how that works.

In the stories

Ursula asks for a voice

in exchange for freedom.

I didn’t know

that deal was already made for me.

Because every time I tried to speak

you rewrote the story

until even I started to believe it.

And now every song I love

is about drowning.

Not because of the ocean.