Sessile.

Like a half moon of jagged teeth, like a love nip from a cookie cutter shark, the impression was red, red, red and clearly visible by starlight. He leaned forward, rubbed the zigzag on my knee with steady hands. "How did you know I was going to say that?" he asked, his unfamiliar thumb still tracing the arced /\/\/\/\/\. Kith and kin I silently replied.

Silently replied as mere days before I was told to keep my jokes and opinions both, as both were unwanted. So away I sailed, five days adrift to resalt my gills and wait for the tides to change. I am of the sea, and never more was I reminded that I do not belong landlocked than I was reminded this weekend; neither mermaid nor manatee, still I feel heavy and waterlogged and unaccustomed to running on unsteady legs. Buffeted on both sides I'm fighting the urge to dive until I drown, to keep swimming to keep breathing.

I am a paradox, a Pandora's Box of contradictions. I do seemingly callous and heartless things, overcome by chum in the water perhaps. But I find it infinitely easier to be friend than lover, easier to tow remora than suffer bite wounds and tonic immobility. I can give and give and give without giving anything at all.