Holding Wishes

What is it like to be granted a wish when your first kiss was laced with bitterness?

The Mermaid

They said they found her drowned below the galley. She had tried to scratch her way back to sea.

Empath; this solitary epitaph, words come lucid, swept on tides, murky.

Shattered into a host of ghosts I never saw a demon save in the memories of my screaming.

and that was the day she stopped speaking, abruptly, out of the blue; without warning.

There's been a hell put on me, and it isn't written on frail paper, in black ink by pink skinned kings.

My heart is on fire. It burns like ember logs in pot belly stoves.