With quiet feet and determined eyes
a girl with braces
borrows a green pair of her mother's pants
and tiptoes to the bathroom.
The bathtub fills with warm water
as she squeezes both her
legs down one pant leg.
And now that her little ocean
has come alive, she flops in, face first,
wanting desperately to feel
what it's like to be a mermaid.
But no, it's nothing whatsoever
like being a mermaid.
All she's doing is making
a big mess in the bathroom.
Her splashing, blubbering experiment is failing.
She's nearly drowning!
It's a bad and dangerous imitation
of the state of being a mermaid,
just as punctuation is a sorry substitute
for the soft sounds of human breath.
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