Big Fish, Little Fish...

Please let me be a mermaid. Let me swim out into cold and murky green depths.

I'll sing songs with fish, cut my hair with crab claws. I'll stretch out on stinging coral beds, my blood bleeding gold. A non human ichor.

The only times I ever truly feel free is when I am singing, or when I am swimming in a cold river with a hard current.

I often wonder if people who drown give themselves up to it. Maybe they just let go, and are pulled into an endless swirling adventure. Or maybe they just fucking drown in abject terror.

The current urges, slurps at my will. It sings to me, calls to me. I know it wants me for I want it. Crushed between the moon and the ocean, I hear the constant call.

A Bubbling Cauldron of Anger.

I want to shed my skin, peel back layers of muscle. I want to pull out my bones and crack them so that the marrow runs, all oxidized and sluggish.

My technological shackle pings. Another one, sniffing about. At first I liked it, felt the confidence rise and my swagger build. But now I feel chained to it.

Every time I turn on the television, I'm told to mate. My body betrays me, biological clock hammering away. I want to stay alone. But this concavity, this hollow hole in my chest begs to differ.

Even now I bare my teeth, alone in my room tapping away at this fucking keyboard. I feel threatened, challenged. My mind says I am enough for me. My body says otherwise.

Nothing stops it. Not seas of alcohol or handfuls of pills. Not billowing clouds of smoke, or even bloodletting.

I feel trapped. Caged. And furious.

Circled, not cubed.

This pain cycle, this spinning vortex I have trapped myself in must stop.

But the sounds come in. Winding through my spinal column upwards to my temples, and I am caught. The clinging net has been cast. It smothers me, even though it is as light as webbing.

The thoughts racing round, spinning and whirling like a chipped ballerina in an old music box. Tinny and muted, sickly and unkind.

When you're born bad, how do you pull the darkness out? I'm kicking out the legs of the stool, one by one. I'm dangling, fighting. FIGHTING to be good. Battling to not use all of my words to fight.

This creature, this consciousness, this fountain of cyclical and trembling terror is what I am. But I fight. And I will fight myself. I will win. Or I will suffocate.

No-one can touch me, truly. Hate me. I hate myself harder. Push me. I push myself closer to the precipice. Pull me. I'll cartwheel into oblivion, laughing all the way.

See me. I'll see you. I will turn, to at least see you. I want nothing from you. Just to look. And everyone wants to be seen, if even just once.

Before I hop the banister of madness, and slide all the way down with shrieking mirthful howling.