Waiting, Wondering…
She is motion and I am the sea waiting for the moon and the tide it brings. I am duty bound to pull her in, pull her under, and swallow her whole. What she does not give will be taken. All who come to me realize their mistake, but only after there is no return. They battle the undertow in constant flux; they battle their fear; and they battle the history that brought them here. I no longer have to hold them close, babes to be swaddled and soothed. Now is the time to reclaim what has always been mine. Motion and sea simply are.
She wants what she does not know is not hers to be given. She comes to where I wait, like a prisoner led to execution, not knowing she lives the purest of freedom. Hope has never existed. Desire is a fleeting thought someone else had but never told her about. Every moment of her life lives one last time as it unknowingly crosses her face. The revelatory sorrow is for no one but herself. Twisted, molded, and most importantly, seen through squinted eyes, she and all the ones before and after believe in the reformation before God as witness and executioner.
She is St. Augustine clinging tightly to earthly desires and I am the sea who waits until she is ready to search out peace and finally find sleep in my comforts. She rests in my vigilance and I find calm in her proximity, finally content in knowing the colors of her eyes as sun and moon shift the days. All of my knowing follows the arc of her body tucked under her arm to the rise of her hip, patting her down, readying her as if she were a magic trick about to disappear.
My life has always been hers to take. My nightmares nothing but preparations. I learned patience is not passivity and holding her in my love is not submission. There is no action beyond the waiting, wondering. That, my friend, is the road to becoming all of the seas. I must trust she will come looking for me. Trust she will want to know who held her sorrow for that ever so small moment. I have known her kind, as she knows mine. She will find me because she will follow the falling skies. I am the avalanche she silently, unknowingly wished for while walking the high road.
She is motion, I am the sea, and we are the rivers formed as too many tears overflow and cut into earth. Time will deepen our passage. The sun and the moon will continue taking their turns to light our way. I will continue to catch the tears she can’t stop or contain. I will feel the aloneness she can’t explain and wash the sadness that will forever remain. Without her the sadness is mine alone. I will continue to wonder because I cannot reclaim her even if there is no sea without motion. But I take the ones who come before and after. I take them and wait for the source of my power to come to me. And she will know she was never alone.
