The tide comes in,
relentless and heavy,
bearing all that I have lost,
the weight of it pulling at my chest,
drowning me beneath waves
of who I was and who I’ll never be again.
Each crest rises higher than the last,
the salt burns my eyes,
the water fills my mouth,
the roar deafens me,
the rush of loss so loud
it blurs the world,
so I am nothing but the surge,
the depths, the cold.
I don’t remember how I tried to swim—
perhaps I never did,
but there was nothing to hold onto.
The sky was too far,
the shore too small to matter.
Then, as always,
the tide recedes,
leaving me on my knees in the wet sand,
the world quiet again.
For a moment,
I can breathe.
I can hear the rhythm of my own heartbeat,
and it is a promise,
a quiet vow that I am still here,
still alive,
still standing in the soft pull of the water.
But then the guilt rises with the moon,
whispering in the soft breeze,
demanding to know why I am not broken enough,
why I do not carry the grief like a cross,
why I am not drowning still.
I stand in the shallows,
feeling the weight of the waves
as they shift and recede,
learning to swim through each pull,
learning how to walk
on this moving shore.
This, too, is a kind of strength.
Not a strength of defiance or resistance,
but of breath and balance,
of learning when to float,
when to sink,
and when to let the tide carry me,
until I find myself again
on a different shore.
