Fiji Mermaid

on being a fish out of water

You found me where I washed up on your shore, 
an alien translucent thing, gills heaving in the sand. 
And seeing my life ebbing away with the surf, 
you took pity on my strange grotesquerie and, 
having bundled me into the folds of your dress, 
hurried me home. 

Where you dropped my deep-sea fish body 
into your warm bathwater—

and I died, happily.

Because I needed the sea, being as I am, 
a thing from the deep, a creature given to the drinking 
of salt, who needs the dark to see, and the pressure 
of the leagues beneath to keep my fading form 
from failing.

How you cried and cried over my body,
your Fiji mermaid.

But I was at peace.
And if my lips could move again
and I could speak your language,
I would've told you that I'm grateful still,
that it's the thought that counts, 
if anything.