Mermaid

She rose where the shelf drops, a mermaid, fish tail cutting the green, hair moving like tide grass. The water closed over the scaled sweep and opened again. No cliff. No song from a rock. This is the woman of the sea, not the Greek bird woman. Sailors came in quieter, salt on their mouths, a mermaid gift they could not wring out. It comes back in mermaid playing cards on a wet table, in a mermaid notebook that smells of iron and brine, in a mermaid postcard that leaves a thumb damp. The shelf stays dark. The tail does not still.