I would want to be a mermaid if it did not mean I would
be the reason why houses crumble,
saturated in salt, starving for plaster, unable to hold its bones together
as anything more than a butterfly cemetery.

In cages their baby wings can slip out of
but won’t,
coffins engraved like million year old fossils, rings on trees.

I would want to be a mermaid if it did not mean I would
drown any flower I touched or planted in a vase,
laid to eternal rest, unable to nurse sleeping butterflies back to health
and fill pea-sized bellies instead of locket-sized graves.