The mermaid tear has multiple dimensions:  It is the colloquial name for the ‘nurdle’, which is a pre-production pellet, and the building block of almost all newly manufactured plastics, and is also the salty drops shed by mermaids in mourning—the actual by-product of sea goddess distress. 

           Mermaid Tears

            Tears that come from a factory of tears 

            Tears extracted from real live, crying mermaids

            Tears from mermaids caught in the wild and held captive in trash filled kiddy pools

            until they squirt out their saltiest, bitterest, saddest, most non-compliant tears—

            the mineral laden magic tears that have enough sea sediment to mummify a dinosaur

            or mysteriously impregnate a small town 

            Tears that are collected in a funnel and distilled for mass redistribution           

            Tears like rock salt, like crushed bird bones,

            like some arthritic memory you’d like to crack out of your back

            Like that cognac breakfast you drank for a year

            Tears like a broken pearl necklace pinballing into your blouse,

            down the aisle of the bus, and out onto the rainy street

            Mermaid tears like drops of lemon juice in your ceviche cut

            Like the magic potion remedy you spent your last dime on

            Tears like an endless trickle of confusion and relief

            making sweet and sour stalactites in your heart-caves

            Tears that bounce down your cheeks in cartoon sadness and hide

            in soaked up remission on the pillowcase while you dream

            of alligator tears, and

            of Mermaids wrestling alligators for the right to their bigger, juicier tears 

            of Mermaids and alligators kicking back after wrestling like sea monsters

            and trading cocktail sips of each others tears in swanky martini glasses,

            discussing the new war, universal health care, and the problems

            of raising mermaids and alligators in a world full of so much self sabotage

            of so little faith