Riptide

I watched you
Stripped of boards like a ship of nails
Set sail with a second-rate father and your first-mate albatross
Wave-tossed hair, scared
Taken seconds from the edge
Back to that bus seat where
It’s all daily routine

Wake, sleep

Remember pieces of the people who love you, then leave
Loved ones deceased
Mark the crease in your memory
With “there be monsters”

I watched you
Walking that coast alone, or tried
Signed a lease on a house fire
Knowing all too well i’d find a place to spend a night
But not forever
It was a choice i made
A bargain, a pension
Bet it all on a ride which washed on redemption

I watched you challenge the rising waters
No one’s daughter but your own
I watched you fight the life back into
All those drowned souls you know

I watched you like a lighthouse forgotten
With dim beams as pipe dreams
And moss where this heart had been

I watched you scrape it off
Chewed nails and bruises
Sleepless and lucid
Filled lungs with the putrid
And spat out a garden

You preferred below the leaves
Damp things are more honest
Trust not those flowers in august
They’re here for a moment then fall
Like the grown men who went for your throat
Broke and alone
Womb aching
Room shaking
I watched it

Though your glazed eyes trying to say it
Like at some level, maybe you participated

That maybe your hands clutched sand instead of safety
Clutching nothing but maybes
Touched the face of abuse
And signed a truce with his baby

I can’t relate
I can’t understand
I can barely keep back my heart
From jumping onto the landmines tracked
Up your left arm

It’s so hard to hear
But I see it

I watched you in tide pools
Inside rooms which felt like closets
Watched you scrape the sand
To see what time deposits

I saw your eyes as twin comets
Trailing stars for us to follow
And while the loss of you won’t swallow me
I cast to sea apologies

I'm weak at times, but real
Flesh, blood, and memory
To weave ribs tightly
Each night baptized by saltwater
Under each of your riptides

I watched you
Stripped of sails
Making the best of oars

I watched you
Make beds of those horrors

And as you crest
Where the sea meets the sky

I offer my lighthouse
In place
Of goodbye