Bequeathed to the Song of the Sea

I give this grief to the sea.

Not because it can carry it in any other way,
but because it alone has learned the weight of
tides that are never to be held at bay.

Take it, from me, my old companion.
For you have listened longer than any friend,
your voice older than times own end,
your breath the same that stirred the first sails
and will whisper over the last romantic tales.

You knew me before I knew myself.

You carried our laughter upon your waves,
our promises upon your winds,
our quiet evenings beneath stars that believed us eternal.
You remember every whispered word,
though I have forgotten many in labor of survival.

I walked from her believing distance could become a physician.

Instead, it became another name for loneliness.

I wandered forests where every leaf carried her memory.
The rivers borrowed her voice.
The morning birds sang notes she once laughed between.
Even the silence it betrayed me,
for silence was where she lived the longest.

I spoke to strangers with confidence.
I commanded ships.
I crossed the jungles past the mountains.
I wore duty like polished armor,
and the world believed me whole.

Yet beneath my breast lay an empty berth,
its anchor lifted, its lantern extinguished,
waiting always for one vessel that no longer returned.

Do not tell me that time heals.

Time teaches the wound new shapes,
it teaches the hand where not to reach,
it teaches the tongue new words to avoid old names.

But healing...

Healing belongs to something greater.

I envied the sea birds,
for they always returned to the same
windswept shore.

I envied the tide,
for though it departed,
it never doubted its own return.

I envied the stars,
who disappeared each dawn
without fearing they had been forgotten.

I possess none of their certainty.

I believed love had become another place in sapience,
one whose borders I had crossed fully knowing,
one to which I would never again be admitted.

Still...

Still the sea continued singing.
Not loudly. Not triumphantly.
But rather patiently.

As if every wave whispered,

"Wait, be silent and be still."

And I, stubborn creature that I am,
pretended not to hear.

Then there she stood.

No fanfare.
No divine Harolds trumpet.
No miracle descending from the heavens.

Only one woman,
standing beneath the same sky that had watched us part,
bearing her own seasons upon her face,
her own winter bared, upon her heart.

The world did not become new.
It became remembered.

The wind recognized my name again.
The gulls wheeled lower.
The sea struck the shore with laughter
I had not heard in what seemed like forever.

I looked upon her,
and in that single moment, understood
that love had never abandoned us.
Only fear had spoken louder.

We reached for one another
not as children untouched by sorrow,
but as travelers who still had hope for tomorrow.
only to discover we had always been walking toward the same horizon.

I do not ask the sea to erase what came before.
Let it remain.
Let every storm stay written upon its darkened waters.

Let every wave remember the nights
when I believed dawn would ever rise.

For what is reunion
if not, grief transformed into gratitude?

What is forgiveness
if not two weary souls
choosing to build again
where once they watched everything fall?

So I leave this song with the tide.

Carry it beyond the harbors,
beyond the reefs, beyond every place where lovers believe
their farewell must be forever.

Tell them, my boon companion,
that oceans are not measured by the storms they endure,
but by the shores they return to.

Tell them
I once believed my heart had become an abandoned coast.
Desolate, barren, a shipwrecked hull laid to waste.

Tell them
she found it again.

And should these words outlive my voice,
let them drift upon every cresting wave
until some lonely soul hears them
and dares, if only for a single breath,
to believe the tide is returning home.

I Bequeath myself to the Song of the Sea
The softest touch of star lit shadows upon my heart
My Pendulum swung and there it shall be.
I give of myself, a promise, a start.

Thank you for your inquiry.


Penned by my hand on the 15th of Valnuary, in the year 1010 AF.