Salt gathers in the corners of your eyes,
Yet it is not the sea you search.
You scan the horizon for a dawn long fallen,
Her name the only compass left
To a helmsman lost within his own wake.

I send lanterns drifting on night tides,
Each flame a word I never spoke,
But you see only the shimmer of old stars,
And mistake their glow for hers.

Once, I stood upon the cliff's edge,
Braiding wind into a prayer of return.
The gale carried it to you,
Yet memory, faithless sailor,
Let it sink before it reached your deck.

You wear amnesia like battered armour,
And even without your past
You refuse the present I offer.
My voice breaks on your hull
Like waves on ironwood:
Loud, futile, forgotten.

They say the Goddess rose from mortal love,
A blaze of gold beyond our grasp,
Yet when she fell, her afterglow
Scorched your heart to ash.
I kneel amid the cinders,
Hands empty,
Watching you trace constellations
Only she can name.

So let it be wind that keeps me company,
And tide that takes my confession.
For though your course is locked
On a sun that has set,
I will stand here at Windward Reach:
a lighthouse you never needed,
burning all the same.

Penned by my hand on the 14th of Scarlatan, in the year 981 AF.