You wanted to be a mermaid, couldn't imagine
a nobler end; dissolving, for love,
into an iridescent crest on the water's restless surface.
I wanted to be Mickey's dog Pluto.
Years later you told me I wasn't Pluto, but we were Venus
together; clinging to dreams of Nirvana, vanishing
into the cosmos. You wondered if maybe there was a heaven
and if it had mermaids. You told me I was a gothic angel,
singing a dirge instead of a hymn. Your eyes were engulfed
by the blackness of your pupils, a sable that shone with tears. Years ago you said my own were the eyes of the water, pale blue
with murky depths. Once, when you were singing,
I heard the song of a siren lost and far from the sea.
I imagined you as a mermaid, your eyes still livid,
your hair ratted knots and pools of ink surrounding you,
cleaving to your breasts. And in this muse my fingers,
wrinkled and deadened by the waves, reached towards you,
toward the flush of your nipple, the blue filament
wrapping plump white marble. But I grasped nothing
more than bubbles, the ghostly foam of your song.