Submerge
INA PAN
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Drowning usually goes unnoticed by onlookers. The body’s reaction to the intake of water into the lungs is silent & involves only slight movements. There are myths that the body resists & thrashes for help, but those are myths. The body, at a certain point, is simply past fighting. If on the occasion an onlooker notices the drowned party, the victim is often unable to reach out, take hold of the arms of the rescuer. People who survive drowning usually have nightmares years after. In dreams, they are unable to save others. Friends turn to ash. Lovers fall backwards from cliffs. Firstborns sink facedown in pools of spit. The dreamer can only watch as the surfaces above them disappear, as the waves climb higher, as the world shimmers & shimmers.
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Siren Girls
INA PAN
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If we sing & no one remembers us, say we were tragedies. Call us heroes & make us legends with all those divine endings. This is our song & nobody knows it anymore because anyone who has heard it is dead, & the others can't remember. Listen: we weren’t born in the city. We were born in basalt seafloors, forced skywards. Our hands weaved in mist, threaded through smirking dragon boys & weary seamen. On islands we crafted snares for moths, men & treasure hunter sailors tracing ideograms, versed ourselves in the languages of whiskered ghosts, dialects carving tongue through salt fables, silk-covered palaces. We would come to the city masked as toothless dames with knapsacks spilling elixirs, shark fin tonics, roots, as clubfeet pigeons with whirring wings fluttering, phoenixes swept through fish vendor’s stalls, blackbirds perched on jade-ringed gardens. We learned to maneuver the side street brawls & chess matches, dodged over heat-swelling sewer streams, bought potions from alchemists’ storefront canopies concealing leathered men. This is what escape from water means. Listen again: we all use the same words. Come closer. I will tell the secret to you, only to you. The stories are always the same: there can be no ending unless we crawl and weep. Here, this is the secret: this is how you conquer myths. You become human, or nothing. Mermaids cut their tongues & walk with knife-cuts in every step. Fairies rip off their wings & leave stumps on shoulder blades. Centaurs stamp off their hooves & start walking on twos. Creatures like us always end as a spray of salt, drops floating breathless in air.
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Ina Pan is fascinated with the modern myth. Her work is published in VAGABOND CITY, Eunoia Review, Interstellar Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a high school student from New York City.