Seeing the Sea

The sea knows where I am weakest,
It comes for me before anything else.

It finds the worn places in my skin,
the old cuts that swell,
and washes salt over them
as if it’s calling me by the name it gave me,
slowly, painfully,
breath by breath.

I flinch.
I still step deeper.

Because some pain feels like proof
I once loved something real.

The sea washes over me the way you did,
like it has the right to hurt me
for being beautiful.

Every wave carries your name
without saying it.
Every backwash feels like the way you left
not all at once,
but in small, silent disappearances.

Salt in my wounds,
your voice, splintering my skull
telling me to stay.

I hate that I listen.
The sea keeps opening me.
It finds the places where I bleed quietly
and presses its cold mouth there,
as if it wants to swallow my remembering.

But it never drains enough.

It leaves me with an echo,
with the salty smell in my hair.

Salt water burns my throat and lingers in my unsettled belly,
like you never really left.

You told me you loved me.
But the sea drags me under in ways you can’t escape.
It says, I will break you beautifully.
It says, I will come back
no matter how many times
you beg me not to.

And still,
I let the waves carry me.

I offer it my skin,
my memory.
The part of me that still believes
if I stand here long enough,
something will come back.
But nothing washes ashore.

Only the salt water,
Only the sting,
Only the crashing rhythm of losing you,
until my name tastes like burning salt
and my heart learns how to deceive like the sea.

So I let the sea wash over me
to the edge of myself.
I let it teach me
the terrible beauty
of yearning what hurts me.

Because you taught me first.
And now every time I see the sea,
I am seeing you
in a body I am still willing to drown for.