Another restless night interrupted with a start,
“Oh!” Cried the Mermaid on the shore as she awoke,
“My heart…” She gasped as she felt within her chest,
The beating so hard, the quiet rhythm that broke,
Looking up into the Night with tears in her eyes.

“I will protect you Mermaid,”
He said as he reached out.

Painfully she reached back at him as the waves carried her under,
“Mermaid!” He called as she disappeared from sight,
Thunder drowning out his voice,
Lightning beating him back into the shadows.

A storm, like a nightmare invaded the quiet beach,
The Mermaid hurled to the Ocean floor,
To the depths of her grief she had been trying to leave,
The waves crashing overhead as the current carried recklessly underneath.

There she lay, struggling, fighting against the Ocean and the Storm,
But “Oh….” She clutched her chest “, my heart…”
The murk of the deep surrounding her,
As the storm wailed above,
awakening those dead and buried.

And there arose through the muck,
As she lay unable to move, unable to breathe,
The many ghosts that these storms always bring.

They surround her, caress her skin with their forgotten hands,
They whisper, against her cheek, into her ear,
With only the memory of their lips,
Their voices, like a fever, infect her heart,
Clinging to its failing brokenness, reviving it with a jolt of adrenaline.

Sighing with a tear as she looks at each of them,
Their emptiness begging her to stay,
And as she sees through them she screams in agony,
Tearing through the depths to the surface as fast as she can,
Nevermind the force of the current, the pounding of the waves,
The howling of the Storm above….
The fear in her soul urges her on,
Any longer underwater and she might stay.

Breaking through the surface, so far from the beach,
Looking up into the raging Storm as it shakes the earth with its thunder, “
You cannot have me!” She clutches her heart as she feels a fluttering,
“You cannot have my heart!”

She gasps for air, fighting to stay above water,
The lightning splitting the sky in two,
And releasing a torrent of suffocating rain.

“Noooo!” Her chest aching within from the pounding,
As the many hands pull her down from below,
Calling to her like death from the grave,
Begging her to stay. “You belong here…you belong with us…come…”
They sooth with their whispers,
Dragging her down,
Fighting them till exhaustion paralyzes her body.

“Mermaid…” They whisper,
As they, each of them, take her in their arms,
Reach inside her depths to take hold,
Of the piece of her heart that was theirs,
“This will always be ours…”
As she cries… “How can you claim something living when you are not?”
“We live as long as we have your heart…”
Looking up through the Ocean, through the Storm,
Above the Heavens…she prays, “Where is my Sun?”