One forgets that they are not an ocean.
That they cannot break against the rocks
and crash violently into the shore.
We forget we are but cells,
fused together by the straining of our voices,
and the laughter in the sunshine.
We are not divided as oceans are,
separated by a mass of land, disconnected
as the Pacific
and the Dead Sea.
We are joined by the lyrics of a classic ballad
and the motions in healing dance.
Our bodies are not liquid,
synchronous with the moon,
the ebb and flow of our rising and falling chests.

We forget that the stitching in our skin has healed over,
clinging to the soft waters of the night-time tides.
Sable skies threaten the collapse
of our feeble house of sticks
climbing to the roof
shaking our fists to whatever slumbers
in the heavens,
begging to be as a stone
when the tropical storms
blow us down
and the ocean drags us by the hair
back to the fussing horizon.

One cannot drift through the human condition,
desire and impulse,
the life-long battle
to feel not as an expanse of water
but as a sturdy reminder
of atoms to cells to organelles,
as a mark on the spotted skies,
a part in the sea where we cross over into
the realm of existing
and feeling,
to become what we are
both in physical form
and in spirit.

We are flesh and we are soulful.
We are real and deserve to stand
feet planted
in the mud
and let the hurricanes wash us over.
We deserve to feel whole
and wanted.
Craved and forgiven.
We deserve to feel real.