Merman

Cherry

By Jessiibear

Sat, 19 Jul 2025
  • 82 reads
2 comments
 

Fishhooks in your pocket
jangle as you wade away
to the fog-pressed pier.

You use a knife to descale
fish, split bone.

The kettle screams,
I flinch—
still expecting your voice behind me.

I stir my tea with a sugar spoon—
clinking and curved.
Watch you fish off
slick rocks behind our cottage.

Even muffled,
the sea is louder
than I’ve ever been.

You love things that flail
when pulled from the deep—
celebrate blood
in cold salt.
You, my merman, 
with blood-wet hands,
more mist than skin. 

I pray the tide takes you—
a mouthful of sea,
while our house steeps in sour—
brine and rot,
like something gutted.

Your hooks dry on dish towels.
I bleed while rinsing a glass.

Then, I wade to shore,
lie with a knife, on my side in sand,
The wind clinks sugar spoons in the sink—
now fishhooks, bent by your hand. 
 

Photo by Shutter Speed on Unsplash (Free to use under the Unsplash License)

Certificate 15
Poem
Tyrants and Clowns
Horror
Other Fiction
Love

Comments

Submitted by Jane Hyphen on

This is very raw, the idea of a man hiding in a myth, with power over his partner, perhaps the only way to think of such a man and accept his actions which appear to involve some violence. And his mood like the sea, dependant on the weather of his day.

 

Submitted by Jessiibear on

Thank you, Jane. Yes, that’s very much the undercurrent I was working with.

The myth of the “merman” isn’t romantic here. It's a kind of haunting, a way the woman copes with someone who’s become part of her environment: dangerous, wild, and woven into the domestic space. I love how you described his mood like the sea—dependent on the weather of the day. That’s exactly it.

 

Jessheart