Poetry Friday!

The ocean never interrogates me.

It does not circle my story

looking for the moments that broke me.

It only receives.

Wreckage sinks

without ceremony

metal loosening its name,

edges softened by salt

until even the sharpest memories

forget how to cut.

I once believed survival

required endless retrieval:

that I must descend again and again,

hands bleeding on the past,

bringing proof to the surface

like a relic held up to the light.

To prove my essence endured each breach.

But the tide remembers nothing.

It gathers without judgment,

holds without attachment,

releases without apology.

Pain is not meant to disappear

But to recompose.

What was once heavy

becomes reborn as something old and new,

no longer distinguishable,

no longer dangerous,

No longer calling my name from the vastness.

I stand at the edge with

the quiet relief of not standing watch.

Trusting that the long below will keep its promise of guardianship.

Surrendering to the tide to finish what pain began.

Not forgetting,

Not forgiveness,

But trusting depth

to hold what I cannot.

I did not abandon the past.

I let it settle

where it could not follow me ashore.

The water keeps moving

And so do I.