She normally enjoyed going to the pier to watch the human families enjoying the ocean breeze. She would smile as children ran carelessly along the wooden planks and mothers called out for them to slow down. She would laugh at the birds swooping down to steal food from people staring out at the horizon wistfully.
But today, she saw a little boy leaning against the railing sobbing. His deep agony connected with her heart like a sword as his whole body heaved with each halting breath. He choked and sniffled, covering his sleeves in snot and tears. He gasped and wailed, his face glistening and red every time he came up for air.
She felt disconnected from herself, as though she were high up in the air, breathlessly looking down on the scene. She saw this boy, small and frail, weeping and crying out as his inner pain escaped his heart through his eyes and nose. And she saw herself, a mermaid hiding in the shadows, her heart full of a writhing, black pain with no way to let it out. Her sorrows were locked inside, constantly swimming in the enormous, salty tear that is the ocean. A storm of loss, humiliation, suffering, and pain swirled and raged inside, swelling and clawing at the inside of her soul.
The boy poured out his anguish for an hour, and the mermaid watched every moment of it longingly, aching in ways the boy could never understand. She watched as the tears he shed relieved him, lightened his heart. She watched him take a deep breath and sigh, sniffling as the flow of tears slowed. She yearned for such a feeling, such a release.
Her heart grew so heavy that she sank to the bottom of the sea and collapsed to the ground. She buried her face in her arms and pretended to cry, hoping that mimicking the boy’s actions might somehow help.
It did not.
Mermaid Pirate Dispatch 
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