The dishes can wait. It is August, the evening has finally let go of the heat, and she is on the back step humming a tune nobody on the street can name. Somewhere in the second verse it stops being humming.
The porch light does not come on until the song is finished. The moths have made their peace with it.
She believes she only sings when no one is listening. The whole block is listening and not one of them minds. The church choir alto, the aunt who will not surrender the karaoke mic, these are her hours. The Tide Pool keeps the slow end of summer for her.
When the tail is in the closet, the shirt has to say it for you. The Comfort Colors 1717 is a heavyweight 6.1 oz tee cut from 100% ring-spun cotton grown in the USA, garment-dyed and soft-washed so it already feels like a tide-worn favorite on the first wear (and preshrunk, so the fit holds from June to the cold-water months). It is the tee for the long business day that ends at the lake, and for the landlocked believer whose nearest ocean is a screensaver. Soft on the skin, sovereign in the room. Mermaid Dayz prints it for the woman who has a mersona and a mortgage.