I keep a mermaid at home, well truth for trust she’s a blue-blotched fossil

impressed into my parent’s compromise bathroom tile. Her hair,

swimming like a jellyfish, disappears beneath the frothing waters of a passing storm

tangling up and holding back all the chop waves from her “Death-By Chagrin” pout she flashes as a port of call, remembering the false message “boys mature slower than girls”

that wrecked her far from the leveled grout line shores.

The next step, I guess, would be her revenge, it’s a good plot beat to revisit in silence's amnesty as no other fisherman’s trophy has such bold lines of character 

to trace in the dapples of a full moon sink, but I must thank God

for my deodorant worn as bait, and for the door locks

so no midnight sailor can come in and see how I kneel to scrape the

lint-toothpaste barnacled on her thousand word face.