Mermaid

by Nkateko Masinga

Annette Batista Day

Estranged from my mother for loving a woman the wrong way,

my sister calls and asks How’s exile? Waterworks.

I am crying in bed and my lover is dabbing at my face with cotton.

Child of our cruel mother,

here is a non-exhaustive

list of what is wrong:

The hot-water-bottle exploded between our legs in bed last night.

We might just need more blankets to survive the Northern winter.

She’s late for work again. I’ve bled through the sheets

(There is no urgency to release the blood of non-pregnancy –

just a bloodbath in the morning light and no handcuffs)

On Tuesday it rained and she left our umbrella on the subway.

She’ll drench the pillow with sweat from her fever tonight.

I conditioned my hair and we’ll both smell of argan oil all day.

My sister sends a peach emoji followed by water droplets and I laugh through the tears.

She whispers Do you love her

like you loved Jon?

I whisper back I worship her.

Exile is cold, wet and clean-up is a bitch but all hail the mattress protector

and praise be to the waterbed we’ve made of this love.

How great art the mass of fluid we made love in last night and every other.

Tell Ma this mermaid love

is so wet so cold so juicy

and I shan’t return.

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Nkateko Masinga is an award-winning South African poet and 2019 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency. She is currently the director of the Internship Program at Africa In Dialogue, an online interview magazine that archives creative and critical insights with Africa’s leading storytellers, as well as the founder and managing director of NSUKU Publishing Consultancy. She is the author of a digital chapbook titled the heart is a caged animal, published by Praxis Magazine. Her latest chapbook, psalm for chrysanthemums, has been selected by the African Poetry Book Fund and Akashic Books to be published in the 2020 New Generation African Poets chapbook box set.