The winds have run away from us
Sailboats and feelings of incompleteness
Are now what we call home
Blue skies kiss the scabs on my knees
I've fallen many times while you were ahead of me
The distance stretches its limbs into the unknown
And I follow the quiet heartbeat
reverberating through my bones

If you listen closely, its reciting those words
And promises I once made to my broken self
It tells me all about my journey across the vast strait
That drains into the storm-loved sea
That bubbles and roars under my skin
I walk through fires and biting forests
As I make my way through everything that I fear

I walk these steps, holding you near
Prayers for you on my tongue
Evaporate into the open breeze
Carrying the hope that you make it through
Everything that obstructs your peace

With an overcast sky, summer warns us
the moon stops by for a brief conversation
before taking its leave, replaced by the sun
I stitch together sheep counts, Z's, and dreams
but these days drag into my subconscious
and streams of melancholy drain into one

You shake your head, watching me
it seems I have mistaken midnight gloom
for rain clouds and thunderstorm doom
Summer's warnings, now clear as day,
everything they were meant to say
I tend to overthink and underthink everything we are

When winter comes,
with endless hours of midnight
maybe then, I will have enough time
to consolidate what we are destined to be
unmistakably

Between you and this dying world
Are boats carried by tidal waves
Built from pieces of love you left behind
You keep moving toward the horizon
As their anchors fall into deep ocean
Strings of forgotten fears hold you back
And prayers, from when you were lost,
Take your hand, tell you stories, and bring you back to where the sun said its final goodbyes
And you, covered in terracotta and blue
Begin to sink in the sapphire gloom
As whatever remains from your dreams
Keeps you afloat and clouds disappear
The stars bloom from midnight grey
Illuminating the way home
All for you

Dream, tell me
what have you heard
from the gossiping stars?
did they let my wishes
fall into the hands
of hummingbird nests?
did the quiet ocean blue
bring waves of things untrue?
Were you deceived by piano keys
lingering songs & eulogies?
Does the sun cleanse your lethargy
or are you like me?
Where it never reaches you in time
before everything fades to a quiet dark
tell me, Dream.

Reckless, in a cloud of bloom
Ocean salt from seeping wounds
Eroded sands and mindless chats
Raised eyebrows, and an empty hand
My pulse, waves of emanating pain
In the troughs, is the space
You placed your absence within

Fortresses of shy encounters
Built around memories of happenstance
My cloudy speech and murmurs of nonsense
Infiltrate the speck of soil that still remains
Barren land, and you, a seedling of perseverance
Have found an impossible way
To grow
In my aching heart

You always carried me home with your gaze
In your laughter I could float freely with all my fears left to drown in the sea of your reassurances
I slept in my dreams clutching the threads of my tears
So that in my wakefulness,
I can embroider them onto the fabric of a forgotten past
To keep the memory of your name within reach
So that when I whisper it into the sea breeze
Everything once cultivated grows inside of me
And a garden scape of indescribable ease
Is complete with streams of water that run
from your heart to my shaking hands

What becomes of these fleeting reunions?
Do they wash away with the sea salted sand
and becomes fragments of a conversation once had
Do they transform into the sugar in your coffee,
or the honey in your tea,
and compel you to never forget about me?
Or do they live in this rustling wind
that picks fights with your consciousness
and leaves you in a state of rumination
between the present and the past?