While The Humans Lose Fingers In Factories, The Robots Produce Artwork With Too Many. Dystopian Novels

I’m not going to hate myself anymore.

Tattoo

There is an aching in my heart that I fear I can't articulate. The words would spill from my mouth as blood. Every beat in my chest, a promise that I will die if I am ever truly myself.

Sincerity is the blood held in by the knife in your chest. It feels too much like dying to be honest.

In another world, I am strong. And withstanding, and sure of myself. I pray she’s well, for I certainly am not.

The sailor girl slides down her boat’s rope the hour after sunset and awaits her black haired siren on the far end of the beach. She fusses with her hair. Tries to part it differently, and then differently again to no avail. She kneels on the shore to get a glimpse of herself under the budding moonlight on the still ocean water. A pair of eyes stays on her, gently raking over her battered, poorly patched clothes. She never was one for sewing. The sea called her. It always called her, to what she didn’t know. Suddenly, the pair of big black eyes in the water rose like fishing bobbins in her reflection, and startled her.

“How long have you been there?” She asked.

The siren smiled coyly, and held a finger up, telling her to hold on a moment.

She disappeared under the water and bobbed back up with something in her hand.

“What’s that?”

The siren rubbed the sand off of it with her thumbs, and held it up. A small abalone hair brush.

A Bother

I don’t mean to be a bother, I really don’t. I just can’t help but ruining everything all the time.

You don’t ruin everything silly.

Breakfast?

Well yeah but that’s one off.

Mom’s anniversary with dad?

That was an accident.

So I’ve said. If I told you it was on purpose would you be mad at me?

Well, no, I’m not mom but I’d be shocked. Why would you spill wine on her at dad’s grave on purpose?

I genuinely thought it would make her laugh. Because dad spilled wine on her on their first date remember?

Ohh, right. I didn’t think of that. Did you tell her you were trying to recreate that moment? She loves telling that story.

No. I felt so bad about it I threw up behind some lady’s tombstone over the hill. Mary S. Timbleton was her name.

You never told me you threw up on a dead woman’s grave.

Behind it.

Nearly there anyways. Makes for a better story. Dad would’ve laughed.

He was certainly a better storyteller than I am.

I like your stories just fine. You’ve yet to ruin one of those.

Thanks. I think.

Life asked Death:

Have you ever been loved?

She responded:

Unfortunately. Flickering moments of love for me in forlorn men are common. Though they always end the same. In my arms, thinking only of you.

Why do they call my brother a genius, when he cannot comprehend kindness? When his tongue is tied in any conversation but his own?

Why is the emotional intellect of the women in the room discarded? So often shamed out of me any desire to share myself, my thoughts, upsetting my family feels like embers landing on every inch of skin searing me to silence. The boy gets to be a boy his entire life. The girl has to be a woman the moment he enters the room.

Why do the ones I love keep being taken from me? What have I done to deserve shards of their memory pricking my fingertips like spindles every time I scroll on my phone and see a face that has stolen a piece of them? Their eyes on someone else’s head, their smile creasing someone else’s cheeks, their ginger hair curling around someone else’s ears that don’t fucking look right! I hate that I see you everywhere. I hate more that it’s never you.

The siren caressed the sailor girl’s cheek gently, like a receding tide brushing its long fingers on the sand reminiscently.

“You never wanted to hurt me, did you. Why? Won’t you starve? You’re thin as bone,” the sailor girl asked, letting her eyes roam over her wet skin as she bobbed out of the dark water.

The siren shuddered at the comparison, and whipped her hand back suddenly. Mermaids were competitive, the more meat on a girl the higher she rose in their ranks. To be thin as bone meant one was nothing but that, a carcass without value, without muscle, sinew, or flesh.

“I am more than bone, but you. You are thin and sick even though you rove the land where food grows on trees and you hunt for nothing, and yet, you come to me to die. I will leave you disappointed. If I have to suffer this life, so do you.”

Her short dark hair seemingly melted over her face, as the sunset turned to night and shadow enveloped her entirety.

“I, I meant no harm,” the sailor stuttered, unaware of her misstep.

“Your people never do, and look what that leaves us,” she spat, and turned her head, now a dark hungry pit, toward the docks where a siren hung by the neck.

“My people? Is that what I am to you? Some violent human eager to noose you,” the sailor girl’s eyes carried hurt, and she nursed her chest’s wound with a calloused thumb in circular motions.

“I wish you’d broken my heart with your teeth and not your words,” she said, and retreated from the shoreline with a flush cheek from where she touched her.