It's Always My Heart You'll Find in the Sea

People warned me against falling in love with the sea. “It’s chaos,” they said. But my mother was the first to instill a wild love: passing down her sea legs to me, bobbing in the waves instead of rocking in the chair. Then I grew strong and played alone with the sea. I came home with sand-bruised knees, water-washed nostrils, and a smile more ingrained than the quartz within my hair.

Rip-tides. Hurricanes. Tsunamis.

Universal deluge. Chaos. The unconscious.

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.”

Leviathan. Giant squid. Whale shark.

Man o’ war. Tube worms. Nudibranchs.

The final frontier is not space,

but the depths of the Mariana Trench.

I sit and listen to the ebb and flow;

my eyes closed, floating along the surface,

and crashing upon the shore.

I visit the sea these early mornings. I am anxious and tired, wired and unrelaxed. And the sea, she greets me, clear and still as glass. “Come rest with me,” she says, “I’ll smooth your worries away.” I smile and wryly tease, “You’re peaceful now, but wait until the wind of day.” But I love her still, and this she knows.

For what is love, if it is only the perfect glass? No—love is bloody knees, chaotic storms, and mysterious ocean depths. Love is ebb and flow, floating and crashing, and a smile that can’t be washed away.

People warned me against falling in love with the sea. "It's chaos," they said. And I simply ask, "Is there another more worthy of my love?"