Scuba
Their love was an infinite ocean,
that lost its tranquility after one too many storms.
Deep pauses at the dinner table triggered my thalassaphobia.
Mom was the lighthouse of the oak table island.
Wrath glinted in her eyes as she glared out
at the suspended hours for any movement from my father,
who looked back to her, drowning in the silence.
My fork circled my pile of peas
to find salvation in the tension.
I remember thinking the tines of my fork scraping the plate could cause a distraction.
But I wasn’t even a concern.
Her glaring beacons swept over me,
searing into his face,
baiting him to speak,
to break the surface tension and dare.
The crags she has shrouded behind her imminent
anger have decimated dinners before,
and I see them peeking in her tensed muscles.
Dad wants to be in the light.
To be seen.
She smiled at him.
A grave shiver prickled my body.
Shipwrecks bared their splinters at me.
May I be excused?
I can’t be lost again.
The tension rises,
fills the sails with the gravity of tempest.
I excuse myself,
bunkering down in my room until there is quiet again.
I wanted to be a mermaid so bad because of you two.
Not because of childish fantasy, not to escape,
but to survive by becoming half land and sea,
weaving between you two
effortlessly.
When I asked for scales, however,
I fledged feathers.
Mom pushed the papillae back into my skin,
begging me not to leave,
grounding me from trying to go out on my own,
drowning me with her hopes.
No,
don’t touch my wings,
you’ll tear them, they are mine.
I am not going to let them be weighed down
by you -
I will never be touched by you.
I will drift away,
free,
leaving paradise to their translation.
And my sisters will follow me,
they won’t be stone or water like their parents,
but from what their parents exemplified all of those years.
Seagulls,
and when they rise,
I will become the air,
ushering thermals to push my siblings
from the coastline as the storm rolls in.
We will not be mermaids,
naive to existence.
We will be real,
untethered,
free
happy.