A Poem: The Ocean & Him

The hauntingly vast, deafening water

that I can hear roaring from miles away. 

Waves crash against rubble on the shore like

a twisted thunderstorm, the kind that you

heard as a child and would hold onto your mother’s

hand, thinking it could actually harm you. 

You never knew as a child how powerful the waves

actually were, you’d throw yourself into the unknown

without a care in the world, thought maybe you could

actually be a mermaid or something. I remember 

thinking the water would never wrong me, 

I would never drown. 

It’s only now in my early adulthood 

I see and feel how easy it is to get swept away,

out to sea. To never return, to unconsciously get

caught in the undertow, sinking slowly and profoundly. 

Wondering how can something so transparent, 

so malleable be able to take everything from me; 

submerge my soul under its gliding tone, pour itself inside 

me so easily, suffocating every organ I can think to name but 

you can’t win no matter how hard you struggle,

its waves are impenetrable. 

You verse 10 million miles of ocean and thousands of feet underneath. 

You’re nothing compared to it, it doesn’t care about you, 

it’ll swipe you up in just one roar and won’t think to stop 

and ask if you’re still breathing. 

You are the freckle on a sun-kissed face, a single kiss 

compared to all the lips he had kissed before… 

the ocean, 

I mean.

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