THAT ONE TIME YOU LOVED A MERMAID — LAILA AMADO
/That one time you loved a mermaid, the sea followed you everywhere.
It leaned on your windows, clouds pressing against the glass; murmured about sunken treasures between the lines of late-night radio broadcasts.
It roared in the road noise of a faraway highway, sloshed in the glasses of gin and tonic passed around in your favorite dive bar.
It dripped down the shower curtain, rolled to rest at your feet in a scattering of pearls and salt, greeted you in the night with the forlorn calls of lost tankers when you lay sleepless by her side. In the darkness of the room, her curls on your pillow twisted and twined like ribbons of kelp.
A sudden whiff of seaweed from the teacup told you she was on her way from the airport.
A gust of cold wind in a closed room—all ice and brine—told you she was angry with you.
All staircases spiraled like ammonite fossils.
One time, when you were lying together on the roof of your apartment building and the stars above looked like specks of sun glittering on the surface of the waves, you reached for her hand.
“The sea is a graveyard,” she said. “No one to talk to but the shadows of long-gone whales.”
She didn’t love you back, of course.
Every now and then, you go for a walk along the beach, steps tracing the soft curve of the coastline, and the sea recedes from your feet, forever shrugging away.
Laila Amado writes in her second language, lives in her fourth country, and cooks decent paella. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2022, Rejection Letters, Milk Candy Review, Café Irreal, No Contact, and other publications. In her free time, she can be found staring at the Mediterranean Sea. Occasionally, the sea stares back. Follow her on Twitter at @onbonbon7
