Effluvia

I wish I could live underwater. I'd float on my back from the Columbia River to the Ocean. I would turn into a soggy mermaid and ride currents. I'll never lack for company, when I have the sighs of drowned sailors to fill my ears.

I wouldn't mind the cold. It would suffuse my being and turn me into something else, rewire the deep circuitry of my reptilian mind. Wash it away in the slamming of the waves against the rocks. I'll slam my body against the rocks and laugh. Peals of laughter would ring off of those sharp and slimy crags, and maybe I could be free, in my secret salty blue-green world.

Nothing could tie me down ever again.