Mermaids
“I have heard the mermaids singing each to each,
I do not think they will sing to me.”
– T.S. Elliot, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock
I used to work with mermaids,
a long time ago
In a forgotten city
which continuously burst forth
with foul smelling yellow trees,
angry cyclists and conservative politicians.
In this city there also lived a multitude
of three year old scrubbed faces
Who found themselves one rainy morning
gazing up at me
imploring me to
“draw another mermaid, Miss Morrison, please….just one”
And I would.
We went searching in deep underwater caves
For glitter, silver paint, tin foil,
grains of sand
To garland these creatures in such finery
that no one could comprehend,
their kaleidoscopic eyes turning around in wonder
And then, plied with a sense of glorious achievement,
they packed them into blue briefcases
swinging mercilessly from tiny scrunched up hands
To be placed on fridges,
under beds,
above desks
in envelopes to America.
When I am no longer here.
When the moon no longer penetrates the water
to shine on my luminescent face.
I will live on in those mermaids
Those three year olds, blithely sticking down tin foil
will one day forget me
But the mermaids,
surfacing from long forgotten drawers,
will live on forever.
Gemma Louisa Morrison won a class poetry contest aged 7 with a poem entitled ‘A House is a House for Me’. Now that she is 28, this remains the highpoint of her literary career. She grew up in the far north of Scotland on a diet of American writers, woollen clothes and Calvinism. She writes about displacement, memory, feminism and love. She has had work published in Salome Magazine, The Cadaverine, The Vagenda and the F Word blog.