I've had another day waking up afraid something will change. Brushed my teeth like normal, polished my fingernails, and lapped up some of the good silt (at the southern end of the Hamlet, where our pathetic sun warms the beach so I can pretend it's cookie crumbs) for breakfast. I was trying the Mermaid's Diet for a bit but I can't find the willpower anymore. 

              I know I write this all the time, but I'm too afraid to tell the other women, so I have to write it down again. My usual tricks aren't working. I, again, crushed up the shark eye to sniff and feel alive, but I only felt like my veins had turned to urchin spikes. There's heat on my neck from where they prickle under my skin. Then I thought about going for a stroll around the village, but the smell of me makes me self-conscious. The other maidens keep giving me this embarrassed look, typing slowly on their shellphones, and I'm worried I've become worse than the world. 

              Embarrassing stupid idiot ugly…. FAT! I know there's no point in noticing these things since we are identical and interchangeable, but I do it to pass the time, and to distract myself from the Blood River. Yes, dear Diary, the truth comes out ! The Blood River. I know you are angry.

              I asked that fishman I have a sand dune crush on to spy on it for me. I've been distracted these days by my lack of toenails, but my curiosity for the river begs to be fed. Everything at home is gray. Milk sky, oil in the water, fingers, toes, and rude tongues in the water. NASTY nasty household. Can't find clean turnip leaves in a place like this, and you know how I crave them. The women tell me, "Don't think like that!!" and then I imagine they are smacked around by a blind whale's fins.

              My fishman tells me the river looks warm these days. Rainbow bubbles occasionally rise to its surface, so that must mean it's able to hold delicate creatures (me!). He also gave me a practically disintegrating book he discovered while dredging on the southern end of the Hamlet. Rilke, it says on the cover, under an inch of salt. The words inside are very sympathetic, they explain my interest in the Blood River nicely. (Fishman is a good boy for realizing this, his intellect isn't as pitifully thin as I'd feared.) (My attraction for him flared its seagull feathers after I saw him use his spear, not before. The boy's eyes are outshined by the barnacles on his hunchback.)  

              She was in herself. And her being dead / fulfilled her like fullness. Like a fruit of sweetness and dark,

              I understand this perfectly. Dead — I might as well be dead! Fishing Hamlet is already a dead end for snail women. We slide on our bellies as if we're no better than the beasts we pray against. I've been worried recently that my hair is losing its silver sheen. Not enough lettuce in my diet I bet, but where should I get it? The egg yolk sun doesn't inspire life, only the seaweed clouds do. The other day, I misplaced my seaglasses and accidentally crawled into a patch of expired trout again. Can you imagine how mortifying? The women smell the old fish on me and think I've been kissing the sand again, no doubt. Yes, each day is fresh rain. More opportunities to drown. More fear, debasement, more nightmares, more time worrying about my hot forehead, more BAD! Guppy bones in the fire… glory to Kosm!! Ha! What a joke. 

              She was already root.

             If "she" is root, then I am foam. I glide along the ground but my body is too viscous to feel it. I might as well be pollution. Can't remember my birth, my birthday, any scent other than the scent of ROT and DISAPPOINTMENT.

              My potential is wasted here… if I even had any to begin with. I know I'm vain to think this way. But I'm certain I could touch the bottom of the ocean, get to know its curves, as long as I give it a real try. I've been working on my arms by keeping very still as I pray before dawn, and it's given me some truly enviable definition. I think, now, I must have the fortitude to splash in the Blood River like I'm a shell girl again, not quite happy but not hollow. I can picture my face turning lobster red in its low waves as the blood fills my mouth. Beautiful. Fishman claims crimson is the color of beauty. Though, as much as I fret over it like, I'm not as interested in being gorgeous as much as I am desperate to experience the sensation of fullness I haven't experienced since shell #3.

              To be sure, I need more iron in my diet. But, diary, there's plenty of it in the "Hunter's Nightmare." And if I can't dream, shouldn't I find solace in a nightmare? Don't you think I could do it, Diary? 

              ….Oh diary, I think I will. Why spend another day resisting change if I can choose it myself…! 

              I'll spend all of the sand dollars I've been holding onto in my devil's purse. Buy myself some of that yellowed fishnet I've been eyeing at the market. I can style it like fingerless gloves, like those self-annihilating Victorian women I feel I truly am, really, under this impenetrable shell. I'm tired of not letting anything in. I want to go out. Oh God, let me fly not crawl, please. And if it hurts, I don't want you to worry. 

kisses