The sweet sound of surf echoes at my door and I can smell the serendipity and sea salt.

The brash pounding of waves beseeches an entrance and my ear is damp with the cackle of conchs and whispers of the oyster bed.

She is here.

It is Mid-Summer’s Night Eve and she is here, the mermaid of my youth, the one others call figment, hallucination, psychosis –  the one I have named Stella.

(For Stella, who did a kind favor to a stranger)