I could see, even from far off, she has water for skin. At first glance it looks placid, still. But then I notice the movement. As though a noiseless train was passing by, the light flickering across her body. In this often dark world, she is a source of light, though it isn’t so much light as absence of darkness.
There is a way water can trick one into thinking it’s safe, when it hides depths that would drown you, keep you there with it, without a second thought.

I want to drown in her. To lose myself in her fathomless eyes. To understand what sort of creature she is, even if it means I’ll be unable to share that revelation with anyone but the picked clean bones of those who had sank before me, been absorbed, lost. And perhaps found?
There is nothing about her that threatens. There is no need to be warned. It just is.
I think of every myth surrounding sirens and selkies, mermaids and manatees – I consider that on some level it’s possible my knowledge of tides and the deeps might ultimately save my life, wretched and small as it is, but I know that is folly. I am but a speck. It’s not even that I’m unworthy of consideration, it’s more that she is so vast.

She lay waiting, her body rippling with shoals under a bright moon. I long to skim her surface, to feel the gentle sucking of her tide. It wouldn’t take much to commit myself fully to her depths. All my life I’ve wanted to be part of something greater, grander than myself. Here is my opportunity, so why do I hesitate?
I’ve grown accustomed to the surface, the shallow places where thoughts can meander in eddies that serve to reinforce a narrative that suggests progress, even when there is little. I give little consideration to what is happening below as I traverse my world. Nothing holds my attention for long, I carry only the mildest of awareness of anything beyond what I can readily see. I say that I want to know more, it is most certainly these thoughts that have drawn me to her. She will beckon, encourage, her song familiar, but I must find my own way, and I find myself afraid of what might be lost.

I sense more than see, the shifting, as though sun from behind clouds that move too quickly to track. A mottling of sorts, her flesh suggests impatience, though her features are serene. I am past the point of no return, even as I wind my way home. My journey at an end and simultaneously a beginning, I open my mouth, and breath in the sea.