I was right.
I believed with all my heart
that the grown-ups knew.
That my mother knew.
When we left with chaos in paper bags,
I knew my secret was told.
My child thought was
that it was finished.
I knew it.
There would be no more
dark cornered rooms.
Then, when no one spoke to me,
I wondered.
When he went unpunished,
I lost my self-assurance.
When years passed in silence,
I doubted the validity of its importance.
When I went back to live with him,
I went numb again.
I doubted the omniscience of my mother.
I went invisible.
My insides were smothered.
My heart held its breath
as I sunk underwater.
I was right.
I was not a stupid child
who feared being alone with my father,
and believed on that day, my mother tried
to stop him from drowning me.
She pretended we were mermaids,
and that we could learn to live underwater,
and breathe through gills.
She smiled and splashed,
as her face went blue.
Twenty years.
I have hid in the reeds to catch breaths unnoticed.
I got braver and stole reeds to skim the surface.
At seventeen, I told my best friend
and choked on the swallowed air.
I refused to live underwater.
I kept surfacing. Admitting.
Confiding. Breathing.
Twenty years.
I set my sights on shore.
I told my father I was going on land.
He said I was born a mermaid.
I wanted to believe him.
I kept swimming.
But my feet were not webbed
and my lungs were not gills.
I am heading for shore.
I was right. I am not a mermaid.
I was born to walk on land.
I am taking walking lessons.
I joined a group of mermaids,
without gills and webbed feet.
We are learning to breathe.
We are learning to walk on land.
3-9-01
