🌊 Low Tide, Returning

🪨 Sometimes the past isn’t asking to be reclaimed ... only witnessed.

I’ve come back to the overlook where the eucalyptus

lean like tired saints. I’m here to gather whatever

the years dropped ... scraps of laughter, a torn sleeve

of someone I used to be.

The trail is the same, but the dirt has forgotten me.

It keeps no record of the boy who once believed

he could outrun loneliness by climbing higher

than his own name.

Below, the ocean rehearses its old monologue ...

a long, blue apology. I listen for the echo

of friends who dissolved into marriages, mortgages,

small bright children who call them home.

Once, another friend and I stood here

counting the bruises on the horizon. He said

he wanted a life that didn’t require

so much pretending. I didn’t know

he meant he’d leave.

We met a woman named Gloria ... her backpack

full of postcards she never sent. She said

she slept in hostels because walls

made her nervous. She blessed us

with a cracked thumb and walked on.

I thought dying here would be simple ...

the sky already half-open, the city below

a bowl of trembling lights. I thought God

might mistake me for a bird

and let me pass.

In the memory, I stand alone.

He stands alone. We share the same air

but not the same future. He scans the coastline

for the woman who would become

his anchor, his harbor, his

wife.

Wife. The word still tastes like driftwood ...

soft, swollen, impossible to swallow

without splinters. I let it sit

on my tongue until it stops

hurting.

The wind reaches for me again,

gentle as a child touching

a sleeping animal, unsure

if it’s safe

to wake.

*******

Have a lovely weekend, much Luv, xo.