Since That Time Girls No Longer Swim in That Lake

The way I remember it
It was more like a puddle,
At best a small pond. It had
Nothing to recommend it
Except that the girls who swam
In it appeared beautiful,
Unbearably sexual

To me, a lost virgin teen
Hirsute and twisted and small
Like a fairytale creature
Surreptitiously ogling
Straight legs, smooth skin, taut stomachs,
And, most desperately urgent
To me, the clinging fabric

Outlining damp mysteries.
I stayed long enough to burn
So badly I may yet die
Of skin cancer from staring
At the laughing girls that day.
When I found the fairytale
I had survived years later,
I read I was the merman.