The poem “We are Mermaids”, by Stephanie Burt, offers us insight into how the matter of our worth changes when we reevaluate our impact and life choices outside of a terracentric lens. Terracentrism inherently associates worth and status with ownership and visibility, whereas an Ocean-centric view of measuring our worth functions to circumvent the idea of social permanence, as the water is ever moving and fluctuating. The line, “you don’t have to be use- / ful. You are not required / to come up with something to say.”, alleviates the ingrained societal pressure that to be affirmed or seen, you need to provide some sort of profitable contribution. A terracentric view of life argues that simply existing is not only not enough, but actually leaves a net negative impact on the society around you, because you are taking up space, land, and resources. By stepping out of this rigid, constructed reality, and instead looking to the flow state by which the ocean progresses, we can dissociate from the imaginary demands terracentrism places on our worth and feel worthy just being. The poem moves ahead to communicate that even a life spent “benthic or brackish” inherently has worth, as it is still a life of exploration, of persistence. This challenges the terracentric idea that a meaningful life is weighed by the mass you can claim. The land determines your worth by how much of it you own, but the ocean allows you to own your worth alone––as nothing can be owned in the Ocean, since nothing changed in the Ocean stays.