Chlorine

Ren Yu has organized her life around swimming, measuring herself against the demands of competition, family and a coach whose expectations leave little room for uncertainty. The pool is both a place of discipline and the center of a much stranger longing: Ren wants a body that belongs fully to the water. Her fascination with becoming a mermaid grows alongside the pressures surrounding her adolescence and her relationship with Cathy. Ambition becomes difficult to separate from escape as she imagines a transformation that could resolve everything she dislikes about being human. Moving through desire, bodily unease and the cost of achievement, Ren’s story asks how far someone might go to become the self she believes she should have been.