more fat mermaids

by Linda M. Crate

i want a story
about a fat mermaid
who is pretty,
but isn’t limited to her beauty;

she is smart and affectionate
and brave and she can fight
her own battles and protect her
friends and family-

and if she finds love
it is with someone who appreciates
her for who she is,
not someone who tries to change her
and make her thinner or prettier because
she is perfect as she is;

i want a story about someone
like this

because all my life i have been told to lose weight
whilst simultaneously being told that i am
beautiful, but the insults stick to me more than the
compliments because it is hard to think you’re lovely
when society is a shrine of thin women who are celebrated
even if they’re terrible and mean people.

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has seven published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press – June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon – January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), and the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), and two micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018) and moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018). She also has three full-length poetry collections, the latest being Mythology of My Bones (Cyberwit, August 2020).