Bridget Gage-Dixon
The Mermaid Remembers
But if you take my voice away…what is left of me?
For him I surrendered the sea, the peaceful cerulean depths,
my garden of red flowers fluttering with the flux of water.
I missed the echoing anthem of my home, the pledge recited on a tongue of kelp.
I listened to my sisters speak of the way it felt to split the surface,
the shocking thrust of air spilling over moist skin.
When I rose that first night, the moon streamed across
the white sails of his ship, music swelled the wooden
planks the storm would later shatter.
All night I bore his weight, traversed the waves
with his pale body pressed into my own,
looking for the safety the shore would offer him.
I offered up my voice, the song of sisters spinning on the surface,
broke the circle to seek the man who lived along the rocky coast, and though
I seemed familiar to him, mostly I was a silent shadow.
I crossed the sea beside him on his way to meet the bride his parents blessed,
mute as he told imprecise tales of my home, awash in air as
the sea’s gentle hum became a persistent thrumming in my ears.
Of course, he married her, I could raise no protest,
so when my shorn sisters appeared offering the witch’s blade,
I bore it all day in folds of my dress.
I even drew back the crimson curtain of their marriage tent,
certain I could do what was necessary to save myself,
but the stain of sun across his cheek, her dark hair spread
like tendrils on his chest, was enough to make me hurl the knife
into the brine, watch the water redden where it fell,
red droplets spurting up as it sank.
For him I surrendered myself to the sea,
to ride the turbulent steely spine of the surface,
my song the gasp and suckle of disappearing foam.
Bridget Gage-Dixon spends her days teaching other people's children the importance of novels, commas, and putting their phones away during class and her nights hunched over a computer trying to spin the chaos inside her into verse. Her work has appeared in New York Quarterly, Cortland Review, and several other journals.
The Mermaid Remembers
But if you take my voice away…what is left of me?
For him I surrendered the sea, the peaceful cerulean depths,
my garden of red flowers fluttering with the flux of water.
I missed the echoing anthem of my home, the pledge recited on a tongue of kelp.
I listened to my sisters speak of the way it felt to split the surface,
the shocking thrust of air spilling over moist skin.
When I rose that first night, the moon streamed across
the white sails of his ship, music swelled the wooden
planks the storm would later shatter.
All night I bore his weight, traversed the waves
with his pale body pressed into my own,
looking for the safety the shore would offer him.
I offered up my voice, the song of sisters spinning on the surface,
broke the circle to seek the man who lived along the rocky coast, and though
I seemed familiar to him, mostly I was a silent shadow.
I crossed the sea beside him on his way to meet the bride his parents blessed,
mute as he told imprecise tales of my home, awash in air as
the sea’s gentle hum became a persistent thrumming in my ears.
Of course, he married her, I could raise no protest,
so when my shorn sisters appeared offering the witch’s blade,
I bore it all day in folds of my dress.
I even drew back the crimson curtain of their marriage tent,
certain I could do what was necessary to save myself,
but the stain of sun across his cheek, her dark hair spread
like tendrils on his chest, was enough to make me hurl the knife
into the brine, watch the water redden where it fell,
red droplets spurting up as it sank.
For him I surrendered myself to the sea,
to ride the turbulent steely spine of the surface,
my song the gasp and suckle of disappearing foam.
Bridget Gage-Dixon spends her days teaching other people's children the importance of novels, commas, and putting their phones away during class and her nights hunched over a computer trying to spin the chaos inside her into verse. Her work has appeared in New York Quarterly, Cortland Review, and several other journals.