Can you imagine—
A cavalcade of colors
soft and squishy bodies
/aqueous tumble of prints,
patterns, hues and tones
Overwhelming main street
of what city doesn’t matter
because it’s already underwater
We’ll call it Atlantis
After all, I am
a mermaid everywhere I go
all translucent membranes
and iridescent scales
Scales layered like armor,
that chips away in shades/
a manicure allowed to deteriorate
back to a flushed clear,
then painted over again
There’s no limit to the number
of times I can and will change
It’s not masks
so much as showing myself vividly
No one need fear my truths
unless they’re scared of themselves/
scared of what dwells in their depths
that they don’t know but the depths know them
Men who wanted to lash me to their mast/
their bedposts, a figurehead
Men who will me to drown voiceless,
who would flee their own beds
when they felt the cold tide
of my night sweats
and never understand
that I thrashed with desire
to escape the dragnets of my past
No more will I excuse myself humiliated
to bathe and tremble and lather, rinse, repeat
before they wake/To try and scrub away
the scent of gunpowder terror,
then absolve my chapped skin
with cremes and lotions
After all trauma doesn’t smell of apple blossom/
damage of black tea with lemon
That’s what people—what I—would have
had you believe
Now as I flood the city with a spectrum of self
I know that love will always let me go
Won’t tell me that “you belong here”
comes with a chain of “and nowhere else”
They will kiss the crown of my head
sniff past the perfumery
smell the murk of the shorelines I’ve swam
my coming of age, my fractured metamorphosis
They will not run from this creature of water
that won’t forget where I came from
~~~
Mykki Rios is a queer genderfluid Mexican-American writer, performer and multimedia artist. Raised in Chicago, and having lived many places across the globe, they recently returned home to the Windy City. Mykki has had works featured in issues of HAD, Tampa Review, The Bloomin’ Onion, Synkroniciti Magazine, and more. They were also a finalist in Lupercalia Press' 2022 Chapbook Series Contest. They have had poems nominated for the Monarch Queer Literary Awards and the Pushcart Prize.
