A Woman Needs a Man like a Fish Needs a Bicycle
Ariel was the pretty one. The one the sailors died for. The one the crustaceans sang to.
Ariel was lured to the stagnant lands, the desolate dunes and the harsh dryness of air and sun. By…by…a man. A man!
She’d seen his type before. All skin-tight wet-suit, goggles and widened eyes. At first she thought about dinner, well, what else was there to think about when seeing a man? However, there was something more to him than just mere meat, sinew and marrowbone. He had a look of contempt about him. Like he’d seen a thousand beautiful sirens before.
She sang to him.
He just ignored her. He. Ignored. HER!
What did she need with a man anyway, if he were not food?
The ocean ebbed and flowed, tugged by the invisible net of lunar gravity.
She dreamed of him.
He returned. Only to ignore her.
She’d show him. She’d go to his land where he would see her mesmeric beauty. Then she’d ignore him back. That’d teach him.
But sirens can never return.
And now, after sixty years, she stands every day on the wrong side of the beach. She dreams of abandoning her bicycle, of luring lonely old men for a final swim in the cold sea.
Metropolitan Dreams 