Stars are shining on the tide, a scattered cosmos of pale jewels lost in the milk flow of moon-radiant churning, the barnacle-clad rocks which are kissed by Neptune’s lapping secretions. From above, up here, the crabs look like spiders, so small, yet I know them to be as large as the young dogs, the weaning sea wolves that nip at the salted breasts of their basking mothers. I crouch low, belly weighing down the wind-swept grasses weakly festooning the sandstone crag, watching with zeal. If I am seen, they will scatter. Not the crabs—I care not for the crabs, nor the sea wolves—but the hybrid ladies who rise from their coral kingdoms and kelp gardens, the shimmering women with fishtails rimmed around their waist where their navels would be if they had them, which they do not. They are shy creatures, these mermaids and mermatrons who stir my heart, who take me, air-breathing landlubber that I am, and toss me into tides of ruinous fever, gale-force wailing and ocean depths of delirious need. All it takes is one look, one glance of their fish-mammal mashup, and I am pulverized by crushing waves of mythical ache. Oh, to have scales of my own! To finger the gills at my neck, to pluck at them assiduously on my webbed fingers. My fantasy betrays me as I touch myself down there, right below where I wish my own fishtail could be. Crying out loud, my unchecked arousal has betrayed my position. The water wives melt into the sea, their siren song bubbling to the surface in melodies of torment, words I cannot decipher, but can tell, in the very least, are furious in nature. The crabs skitter, buffeted by foam, giant crone hands probing each orifice of rock, retreating to their tunneled, Hadean lairs. The sea wolves bark and bray and roll their eyes, the whites exposed like fabled pearls. Inherent instincts prompt them to retreat, and just like that, they are gone, below the water and well away from the malign arrival of a new menace. The mermen rise from black-blue fathoms wearing whirlpool kilts of silvered sea-froth, beards of foam flowing from glaring faces, fists raised up, and coral-pronged tridents thrown upward in my general direction. I watch their weapons fly, thrown high and wild as if the fragments of a broken mast in a raging sea-storm, a crow’s nest caught by the wind and whisked away, sailor and all, like a monkey in a bicycle basket hit by the limpet-knuckled fist of Poseidon himself. Spears splinter against the vertical rockface, falling, useless and broken, to be swallowed by the surging surf below. I am left untouched, unscathed, wishing badly to be touched, scathing about the limited uses of my earthbound body. From up here, I witness a vast, watery horizon, open air for endless miles. I cannot fly, I cannot swim, though I can walk, leap, run, and climb. Sadly, these methods lead me nowhere, guiding me in endless circles around the rim of my small and barren island. From up here, I witness a vast, watery horizon. Down below, stars are shining on the tide.

by Robin Wyatt Dunn, with Perchance                             

James Callan is the author of the novels Anthophile (Alien Buddha Press, 2024) and A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). He lives on the Kapiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.