The Sea is Home

My origin a series of islands with a mangrove skeleton, a musculature of

mainland dirt, and a nervous system of coral

Where I am always welcome

My space of clarity

Axis of stability

Where I’m free from form

Invisible

In Symbiosis

A portrait.

A frame of memory

The idyllic postcards of my new home

Tourists stumbling around waiting to fill their sunset quota, and buy palm

tree covered t shirts

Merman on the 800 block

Everything is coated with salt, key lime flavored, sticky, and stained with

cocktail syrup

Yellowtail fish fries and deep tracks

Chain smoking fish guts

Many baths of ocean water

Rejuvenating

The sting in my eyes and upon the first plunge of the day

Tables full of family photos covered in too many layers of dust

Good morning sunshine

My mother’s tight embraces

Her broken heart

A brother engaged in cyclical acts of self destruction guided by a broken

compass

Forgetting himself

Strangled by false apron strings

Fixated on the sunshine that holds all the answers

I am a bystander

Tangles of seaweed that mark our bodies with the unknown, and unsaid

My response to the letters you sent me

Unfinished

The letter I expected to receive that has yet to arrive

Possible futures

A reminder of who is lost.

What we miss.

What keeps us awake.

What blocks resolution.

What misplaced our peace.

The Sea is constant

I’m caught in the currents looping, pulling, drenched.

Coping

Constantly moving,

Scrutinizing the past

Realizing

With an exhaustive mind

The body that will carry me with strength or tear me apart

Uncertain of my place

Forever in the care of the tides

Always captivating my attention

So that I can take comfort in getting lost again

My Guide.