We are mermaids. We come from seekers. That’s how mermaids come to be. Maybe our grandfathers worked long hours in factories. Maybe husks or shells from cane or corn left their skin bloodied. Maybe the sun burned.

Their spirits burned. They moved like fire through fields. They scorched the earth, burned bridges, left women scorned and mothers weeping because wind moves and fire moves and water moves, and even earth moves. And their spirits were moved.

Moved to elsewhere, some greener grass of their fantasy where the sun is forgiving and the fields yield their harvests easy as whores and the factories are shuttered, the evil dragon’s breath of industry churning from smokestacks in poorer lands. The seekers, our people, washed ashore like sea glass, ran the spectrum of colors, regarded as trash or curated and upcycled into something only mildly resembling themselves—a wind chime, a vase—something ornamental to the purpose of culture. Their own homes were hovels where sour breezes blew melodies through cracked windows, their vases empty whiskey bottles. The seekers learned, and their burning became embers, became smoke curling up like dragon’s breath from smokestacks, reaching back toward home.

And now we’re mermaids.

We are mermaids, beached and sifting for sea glass, for the shattered fragments that can splice legs back to our torsos and walk us back to a place like home.