Mermaid Hair
by Ellora Sutton
Mermaid Hair
I fell in love with the sea
when I was six,
on a glass-bottomed boat
as it meandered its bovine way
over fields of seaweed
that the skipper called ‘mermaid hair’.
Mermaid hair, mermaid hair,
my fingers fossilized in the dryness
of not being able to plunge through the glass
and plait the diaphanous other-green.
Were there ladies underneath?
I fell in love with a lady
when I was sixteen,
and my fingers ached
to plait her hair and find her
underneath.
Would it have been worth drowning for?
In an abandoned place
where breathing didn’t matter
yes
and yes again yes
the glass shattered
and we both got so gloriously
cut up.
I have only ever loved one person
as much as I love the sea.
I fell into her
and there was no glass to stop it
and she plaited my hair
even though it was too short
and I didn’t even think about breathing
or what oxygen was
grew eternal with that watery bloat.
She rewrote the tide,
eroded the coastlines,
taught me how to float
on my back,
with only the stars watching.
Ellora Sutton
Ellora Sutton, 21, is a recent Journalism and Creative Writing graduate from a small village in Hamsphire, UK. Her work has been published by or is forthcoming in: Blue Marble Review, Eye Flash Poetry Journal, The Cardiff Review, Constellate, and the Young Poets' Network, among others. She works in a museum gift shop and has been writing since she could hold a pen.