THE COLOUR OF FORGETTING Verse 1 Beneath the black water Is where they live. They insist such things don’t exist, As if the ocean has yielded all its names. Fishermen bribe the sea with prayers, Dropping coins through trenches where pale eels coil, But I was nineteen, brine in my veins, A storm-shattered compass spinning wild. They chase wreckage with sticks of dynamite, Dreaming crowns from splintered keels. They miss the omen braided through the current, The rust-red warning the water conceals. They see shipwrecks as paradise, Never a reason to leave. The sea buries every secret twice— One in the kelp-black depths, one in me. Chorus I wanna be a mermaid, Dark pearl in the blue, Swimming with the ghosts below, Cold heart, no thought of you. Drifting where the light can’t reach, Blue as a drowned vow, deep as an anchor wound, Nobody sees the beauty— They only come to take. I wanna be a mermaid— Gone beyond the reach of you. I wanna be a mermaid… A mermaid. Verse 2 I wanna sink beneath the dark blue, Unclaimed by any shore, Let the current scour my name from the driftwood, And mill old guilt to sand on the ocean floor. Bury me beneath the waves, Salt tangled in my hair, Strip away the ache of wanting, Leave nothing for the tide to bear. Only whale-song and moonlight, Shadows gliding through the blue. No prayers, no farewell letters, No memories of you. I wanna be a mermaid. Bridge Maybe that’s why I loved the ocean— It never asked me what I lost. Never told me to forgive, Never cared about the cost. Just endless swells unmaking shorelines, A kingdom cold and true. Isn’t that the colour of forgetting? Final Chorus I wanna be a mermaid, Dark pearl in the blue, Swimming with the ghosts below, Cold heart, no thought of you. Lost beneath the rolling dark, Blue as a drowned vow, deep as a grudge, Nobody sees the beauty— They only come to take. I wanna be a mermaid— Where even your memory can’t follow. I wanna be a mermaid, A mermaid, Mermaid. Outro Take me to the deep blue… Where I can disappear… Down in the black water below, Where the sea hoards every forgotten thing— Barnacled keepsakes, broken names, and the last trace of you— Until even the tide forgets where it buried them. I wanna be a mermaid, Mermaid. Mermaid.
