Alone in the Tide

Is this ocean really so stifling?
So perverse to my oxygen spoiled lungs?
If I set my mind to it, I’m sure I could
Overcome this salty, briny sea.

The swim is rough,
My limbs bruised and scraped
Like so many stones smoothing themselves over one another
Then the undertow…

So insufferable is this hand dragging me below
The foam in my lungs chokes and sputters in the sounds of my words
Vowels lost in the gills of the fish
Swimming through my hair
Their skeletons wash up on the shores
Of your foggy beaches.

The water has gotten cold
The sunlight is fading from the cerulean surface
Heaving with the World’s rushed breath
The darkness envelops me
As I lose sight of those green, glassy stars
And retreat calmly into the calamity
Abusing my pliable body.

The changing tide washes me ashore,
Tattered and torn
My senses razed and raped by the brutish sea
My throat burning from the salt of your displeasure
And my new source of breath.

I touch my wounded, aching skin
As gentle as your vast, affectionate sea once caressed me.
Our love making, once slow and melodic, left warmth
Burning within me
But this most recent meeting between our bodies
Full of clacking bones and rough, ungrateful kisses
Coldly chills my skin and leaves me with a hollowness inside
For your cold, salty sea to swim within.

With effort and painstaking clarity,
I walk to your calmly beckoning waters
My gait has been tamed, quieted, stifled
By the unnerving imprint of your crashing waves
Against my skin.

I swear…
I only meant to get wet…
But somehow the waves broke above my head
And drowned all of my worldly noise
Now, the silence of your sandy beaches
And the muted crashing of your rolling waves
Bring me discontent.
Your waters are no longer warm to me…
You bring chills to my spine
As you flow out towards the horizon
Distant; always, forever, unceasingly distant
Abandoning me, leaving me colder in the absence of the sun.
I’m taking my feet out of your apathetic waters swirling about my ankles
And turning towards the clamor
Of cold steel high rises
And populated streets.

This solitary life of an ocean
Is no life for me.