Bath

My mother was a mermaid
She lived in the warm water springs
She held court on a bubble throne

Sequestered in a world made to suit her perfectly.
Protected by a door with a lock

She didn’t love the ocean
She didn’t love the lake
Chlorine pools did not excite her
Nor streams, nor ponds or puddles

My mother was a mermaid even so
The water soothed her like nothing else could

The watery ways she taught me
By the soothing of her mind
The sharp and swollen edges
Of a past she couldn’t leave behind

The wondrous things I could have learned
If her stories had been her own.

Now long dead and mostly forgotten
My mother mermaid mine
Your story never told

You were here,
You loved me in your fashion
Before you were lost to time.