Mermaid in the Garden by Caroline Johnson

“Do flowers mourn?”

--Linda Pastan, Traveling Light

Outside your castle I get lost: purple coneflowers,

the pop of black-eyed Susans, cup plants that hold

rain, bee balm, blazing stars, lavender irises, lilacs,

giant golden sunflowers. I am a mermaid growing

pollinators on my chest, with flowers instead

of breasts. I am no longer a nude pygmy.

I clutch my necklace, a small iron anchor.

My new legs stab like swords. I am overboard

on your music, my prince, drunk on longing

and brine, listening to your guitar riffs.

I have swallowed some of the sky and sun,

captured a jar of light, spread it onto the stars.

I hide in the nautilus of your heart, but Cancer’s

hook cut the corner of my mouth and I have lost

all sense of time, tasting only blood and metastasis.

I stop to smell a wild rose, finger a Joe Pye weed,

wink at butterfly bushes. I don’t remember anything

of Cancer’s rape, but its fruit grows in my womb.

Will I return to the sea? I don’t know. I spread my arms,

close my eyes, feel the presence of hummingbirds drinking

nectar, finches as they feed on seeds. I miss saltwater,

the way seaweed tangled in my hair, how I embraced

foam like Aphrodite, my tail glittering as I swam.

But how can I ever leave your garden? Can I even

question a love so blue it transcends time? I reach

inside, shove Cancer’s fetus deep under rock, then dive

into the sea and swim towards the father of my tumor,

a pirate who trapped me deep below in darkness.

Your flowers will fade, my prince, like a sandcastle

washes away. But the perennials come back.

I, too, will reappear in foam and flora,

surfacing always to listen to your music.

Caroline Johnson has two poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, The Caregiver (Holy Cow! Press, 2018). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she won the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row 2012 Poetry Contest. Her poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. Visit her at www.caroline-johnson.com.

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