Ocean’s Abandon

Walking along grains of a resolute coast,
lined with every day she had feet,
trails of dreams follow, to where she'd be
complete.

Surf ruffles over corners inside,
asleep in a waking scene, lulling
images of swimming past
borders of the forbidden deep.

Edge of no return waves a finger
to summon, tomorrow she'd wake
once more, along shores where golden
shoulders rippled on sun-dappled waves.

Breaking halts through the slower
pace of clouded days, steps caught in
skimming gulls of twilight-dimmed eves,
and cries of unfilled ways.

Of tertiary attempts at passing
through saline caves, that grew
colder, and more pestilent than before.
She never knew why, or how.

The subtleties of darkness
were sneaky that way, she scarcely noticed
how her feet bleed, along sand gullies
of left behind days.

Ocean’s Abandon

Faster now, skin flaked off,
the scales grew right over where
she'd stopped caring to exhale, glimpsing
the last silhouette of a whale.

Cascades of hair slipped to mingle
with carefree sands that brushed up against
toes already gone, desires freed to move, closer
to the ebb, where the call...

The call begs as it flows. She heard,
and legs followed until they were
still, bound — and she crawled, arm over
arm, into

The midnight waters that cut
through her bones, protruding
folds of gills burst when the rush came,
water filled.

Flopping, flailing, turning,
wailing, the wind stung, the
ocean itself screamed, crests clapped
as they howled to take her.

Name fell away into the salt,
brine rewrote history, she was
one with the all, in a crustacean-
crusted mystery.

Ocean’s Abandon

Depths pull her under, a blissful shell
opens — no pearl rolls out, she is
real and true, and she is —
without a doubt, free.