Sta.sh
"Turn loose the mermaids," you demand this angrily, clenching your fists you do when you really mean it, "Turn them loose now!" You're yelling at Ursula and her trident as she grows into a shocking sea monster.
(Outside the waves agree with you. Turn them loose, they crash against the metal in the righteous indignation of the sea. Turn them loose!)
At some point your mother will watch this with you. She will wonder why you revolt for the mermaids when there are none on the screen.
(I cannot get them to turn loose the mermaids if I cannot get them to turn me loose first.)
2.
You have always known what you wanted to do with your life. A truck driver, no, a zoo keeper, no, an animal doctor..
(An engineer, a doctor, a surgeon is something you never dreamed of. Probably because it is complicated. You don't like complicated. Complicated means work, and work is something you have never actually liked to do.)
3.
You have to remember the corridors of the ship you were in. You remember how they moved when the ship rocked?
(People are always afraid when the ground moves. Your ground never stopped moving and that was the way you always liked it to be.)
You liked to jump down the stairs of a rocking ship because you loved to hear your father calling you brave and your mother insist you were going to hurt yourself.
(This would continue your whole life. You were either brave, or you were going to hurt yourself. More often than not, you were both.)
4.
The word ruthless is sometimes used to describe the sea. When you remembered her, she was a nursemaid with troubling moodswings. Ruthless applied better to your mother. But the word itself meant nothing. The actions did themselves better in justice when a three year old child has to contend with jeweled fingers that bruise more than just flesh, more in your head who you are...
Remember why? You wet the bed, you broke a glass, spoke up, didn't finish your dinner, your homework.
(The word sorry meant absolutely nothing.)
5.
Certain mistakes are unforgiveable and the kind of unforgivable that haunts you takes your heart and breaks it into a billion pieces. Sometimes, the worst kind of sea monsters are the ones on the inside.
Wounds are bigger on the inside as well...but that is a different story, a different day and an entirely different sort of pain.
Young you knew what it meant you live life as seconds by metaphors on the ship that was the faraway tree and the wishing chair combined for the lands it took you to.
Somewhere between then and now...you lost one of your four spines.
This was always going to be unforgivable on any damned level.
6.
Turn loose the mermaids.
Turn them loose.
Turn loose the mermaids.
Turn them loose.
Turn them all loose...
...set them free.
turn them loose.
turn us loose,
let us live on through your words. . .
turn them loose.
turn us loose,
we wish to be free and alive. . .
set us free,
we see new light,
and wish to be bathe in its brilliance. . .
Anyway. Again! I really enjoyed this, I like the abstract theme, the way there's some deeper sense of meaning there to make you think--something so much bigger and deeper and fuller. Ah! I love it!