NaCl

Salt burns
It turns out.
He said
'there must be something sacred in salt... For it is in our tears, and it is in the sea.'
And when we lose the sea?
Do we lose the we?
He said
'when you move away from the ocean, you lose the heartbeat of the world'
And my skin dries UP in the mountains.
My mermaid tail
Becomes a lizard scale
And the sacred salt that feeds us, bathes us, beats that beating heartbeat tide in the crashing waves we ride...
The salt starts to burn
When it's Himalayan rock salt.
It turns out
I might be a real mermaid afterall