“Mermaid” by SKOTT: I Thought I Was Her Ocean. I Was Her Cage.

I was driving down a Kentucky highway, and the night had swallowed me whole. My headlights carved out only the narrowest stretch of pavement; beyond that, darkness ruled everything. The radio had lost its signal miles ago, so I plugged in my MP3 player and hit shuffle. That’s how SKOTT’s Mermaid began to play.

I was on my way to find my Melissa. Or rather, to find out whether she was still my Melissa at all.

🪴 The Dead Basil

She left three months ago. She didn’t say much. Just left her keys on the kitchen counter, next to a pot of basil that had already withered to brown. I watered that plant for three months. It never came back. I should’ve known earlier — some things dry up for good. All the water you pour on them afterward is just guilt you’re pouring on yourself.

🌊 A Mermaid on Dry Land

When the intro of Mermaid began, I almost thought it was the engine grinding. That low-frequency hum, like something vibrating beneath the asphalt. Then SKOTT’s voice slipped in — not like singing, more like drifting from somewhere impossibly far away. She was singing about a woman who couldn’t breathe on land. No — not a woman. A mermaid. Someone who belonged to the sea, trapped in a place that was never hers.

I understood. Not the lyrics. I understood myself.

Melissa couldn’t breathe either. I just never asked her where she could breathe. I thought home was the ocean. I thought I was the ocean. But to her, maybe I was just part of the land — the kitchen, the dead basil, the dinner table where words went to die. Dry. Silent. The shore she washed up on and couldn’t leave.

🔇 I Mistook Her Silence for Understanding

That winter before Melissa left, I started sleeping on the couch. Not because we were fighting. I told her she moved too much in her sleep, and I just needed a good night’s rest. She asked me if I still loved her. I said, You’re overthinking it. I just need to sleep. After a while, she stopped asking. And then, she even stopped turning in bed. She’d lie there, frozen, barely breathing, so she wouldn’t disturb me. And I mistook her silence for understanding.

💔 The Cage

SKOTT’s voice cracked open in the chorus. Not a scream — something quieter. A hairline fracture on a frozen lake. My hands tightened on the steering wheel. This song wasn’t offering me comfort. It was asking me a question: Did you know you were once someone’s cage?

Not a cage with bars or locks. A cage made of words like, You’re overthinking it. A cage made of a man’s back turned toward her in bed for an entire winter. A cage small enough that she had to learn to turn over in silence, just to keep the peace.

🌑 Opaque Waters

The road grew rougher near the Kentucky border. The moon rose and turned the cornfields a grayish blue. That’s when I realized this song felt like water. Not the kind of water you swim in. The kind you stand at the edge of, staring down, sensing something moving beneath the surface that you can’t name. That’s what Mermaid is. It’s opaque. It holds things back.

🛻 A Highway Confession

I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve buried my father. I’ve been laid off. I’ve cried into a workbench in the garage until I couldn’t breathe. But nothing — nothing — prepares you for driving a beat-up pickup through the middle of the night toward a woman who may have already stopped loving you. I played that song at least ten times. Every single time, the line “take me back to the sea” hit the same spot. Like a needle finding the same wound.

I realized I’d never once asked Melissa where her sea was. I thought giving her a house, a stable life, the Saturday Target routine — I thought that was an ocean wide enough. But maybe she wasn’t looking for width. Maybe she needed depth. And maybe that was something I never had the capacity to give.

🌫️ The Aftershock

By the end of the song, SKOTT’s voice had faded away. Only that low hum remained. Like the tremor on a beach after the tide recedes. I didn’t turn it off. I let it loop.

🛣️ The Final Question

I’m not driving there to beg her to come back. I just want to ask her one thing: Where is your sea?

If she can’t tell me, maybe I’ll stay and help her find it. And if she points toward someplace I can’t follow — then at least I’ll know the truth: I was once someone’s cage. And I finally set her free.

Mermaid ended. And began again.

My headlights swept across a field of sleeping corn.

Kentucky. Eight more miles.

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