The Extinction of the Mermaids
No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.
– National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Remember the timbers of the burning galleys of the Trojans turning into the flesh & fin of green daughters of the sea? They joined with the crones inaccurately thought to have been cast in a scene for the Romanian stage or out of Ireland by Saint Patrick. This was Girl Power before the first wave of feminism. They picked up Jullanar the Sea-girl with eyes bordered with kohl & undulant hips, skin smoother, the Arabs said, than the curved inward surface of a conch. Another clutching comb and mirror had loosened her tail from a coat of arms to join the ranks next to a Finnish Nakki playing a silver harp o' night & the scaly daughter of Ravana who had fallen in love with Hanuman.
Everyone followed the glinting jeweled fish shape of Atargatis of Assyreia who had once made love so fiercely that she suffocated her shepherd lover
to death & in mourning cast herself into the ocean only to find her beauty too great to turn entirely fish. One by one, they each joined the procession,
oscillating like a sine wave of such charmed speech & wriggling song that no one seemed to remember that their spawn of eggs were externally fertilized. Their hair flowed in the sun & their scales purled as they moved together, a braid unbraiding over the horizon, leaving behind just manatees. Like that. One after another. And then they were all gone.