I needed the ocean,

and it,

me.

The water rushed over my feet,

cool,

a stark shock to the toes,

while the salted breeze

billowed my skirt

and played with my hair.

Blue-green in the morning,

the glass plated waves

mimicked the clouds

that swirled just overhead.

I laughed and reached up,

half expecting my fingertips

to graze the cotton-soft puffs.

Sun-sore by afternoon,

I sat in the sand,

drawn eyes searching the horizon.

There was a smell,

I think,

that told me a storm

was riding in on the tide,

my name, 

a furious whispers

on the tip of the tempest.

The sun's battle was lost by four,

and the angry waves

whipped around my ankles,

cold, black,

and heavy with hate.

The air, 

burdensome and stale,

lent nothing

as the tide dragged me

further into the sea,

the lines of my heels in the sand

washed instantly clean

as though I'd never been there at all.

You hang from my mouth -

you're subtly bitter

and you cling to me like shadows,

restrain me like gravity,

permeate me 

like language and literature.

I am on my back,

ugly

and splintered by my own betrayal.

Your eyes, my moon;

my skin, your earth.

Our consequence,

dead stars in this graveyard of a sky.

I dream of withering -

being awkward and flimsy,

but beautiful.

I long to be

smooth lines

and jagged angles,

pale,

smiling,

and bleeding air.

Be a good girl,

now.

We'll avert our blind eyes

while you scream in your glass cage.

Swallow those capsule dreams

and make your idle wishes;

we'll sell you shattered to the man 

with a clean coat and paper merit,

who relishes the broken, second hand people.

He'll fix you right up

with his potions and prayers.

But, please -

don't come to us with your tears and your pleading,

for there's no poetry to speak of,

no words to rebuild it,

and we aren't in the business

of lending inspiration.

We'd rather you bite back that misplaced silence

that echoes through the air.

Find some provisional mend for those open wounds

and present yourself

as though you were never

this thing that you've become.

Let's see that smile,

little girl,

even when you're laying down to die.

They seize the season,

anxious to exaggerate and boast their pretensions.

Reeking of cold cash

and lukewarm charm,

status is sought and staked behind the doors of hazy hotspots,

where winter well-knowns

and the well-to-do

collect charades on napkins.

They flaunt their big bills 

and serve smiles with swagger

while they pin points to shoulders

and calculate the scores to be.

And just when these pawns think they're kings,

time is dust beneath them

and the Queens are setting their clocks for another round.

Your blood

has surged through me

for 38 years,

4 months,

3 days,

yet you and I

are no more familiar

than two specs of sand

sundered by the Sidari.

If tears were oceans

and fathers, ships,

a thousand lifetimes wouldn't be sufficient

for you to find your way

to shore;

your sea-worn hull

would be at my mercy

until time slowed to a stop

at the hands of God Himself.

If brothers were moons,

the gravity of a shattered heart

would tug at my tide,

a celestial puppet master

to render your wheel a nautical marionette,

his crescent grin

leering at your wet bow.

If regret were a rudder,

you would have been aimless

with or without

the tempest of our torment.

But even a perfect storm

can fulfill its fury,

grace unfurling through the swells,

the Pacific,

a pen in the hands of the

Author of Accord.