When They Find My Hat. I’m With You.
I could tell that this goodbye was different by the way your lips turned into sand after I kissed you in the car.
“Excuse me,” you said with the hint of saltwater on your breath.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
I did but I didn’t have the courage to say it out loud. I just brushed back the seaweed hair that was covering your eyes and placed one last kiss on your smooth forehead.
You were leaving
forever
and I was going to have to
stay
for even longer than
that
you were going
back to the ocean
and there wasn’t
a damned thing I could
do about it
the tide had come for you
and I was to remain
sitting by the shore
like a haunted lighthouse
in a world of no boats
I’m cursed to be
a useless relic
an old world antique
a forgotten structure
holding it’s breath
for a return of you
that I know will never come
you opened the car door
and the water we were sitting in
poured out out out out out
onto the
pavement outside
the flood created a wide stream
straight to the gate where your plane
was waiting to take you away
you turned to me
one last time
you were so
beautiful
in that moment
your eyes
had become seashells
that played the echo
of all of the times I used
to make you laugh
fuck, I was so good
at making you laugh
back then
the sound of your
laughter kept me
alive more nights
that I ever admitted to
you
my love,
I would give anything
to make you smile
just one last time
just one last time
I’d like to sunbathe
under the fire of
your lovely mouth
I placed my hand
on the fluorescent
plankton that had started
covering your hands
I was shaking
in the wake of
your transformation
in the riptide of
your goodbye
in the rising water
of your leaving me
I tried to touch your
face one last time
but
you became surrounded by
pink seahorses
who were swimming around you
I could tell that you
were already gone
taken by the sea
you couldn’t speak
but somehow I could hear the prayer
you offered to the sea
your voice rang
in my head like a crying gull
as you said
“love is an ocean
and it’s where I belong
love is the great deep
and I am it’s new song.”
with that you melted into
a whirlpool that formed around you
and joined the other
sirens of the endless
blue mystery
I parked a mile away
and watched as your
plane rose straight into the air
before it turned into
a pod of dolphins
that you rode right the mouth
of the mouth of the sea
that waited for you on the
lip of the glowing horizon
you were right
love is an ocean
and you are it’s song
but I’m an island
and maybe we were doomed from
the start
and maybe every night I wait
for you to return to me
as a tsunami
my love,
I sit on the surf
with my toes
dug in the wet sand
waiting for the earth to shake
and the lights to leak out through the mantle
and the birds to circle overhead to watch
the waves to splash around me
like a million little kisses from you
like a fool,
I’m waiting for
the thundering boom
the quivering ground
the rising waves
the sound of your voice in the gulls
the coming reunion of us
oh my love,
you were right
love is an ocean
and you are it’s song
and now every night
I leave my sun hat
on the fence post
and I walk down to
to the beach
of my memory of us
and I wait
and wait
and wait
for the moment
when you rise out of
blue
to pull me back
under the sheets of
your holy water
all over again
someday
the only trace of
me left in this world
will be my abandoned hat
on the fence post
because that will mean
I’m with you again
drowning in your touch
love is an ocean
love is an ocean
love is an ocean
please, oh please
my love,
please let me once
again hear
your deep blue song
please, oh please,
my love,
please let me make
you laugh
just one more time
oh my love,
please
