I do not love you
like a traveler loves a view—
I love you
like a secret loves silence,
like depth craves depth.

You are not just water—
you are emotion in motion,
a hymn sung by moonlight,
a soul with salt and storm
in your veins.

I love how you breathe
without needing anyone to notice.
How your tides rise and fall
without shame,
how your waves hold both peace
and power.

I love that you rage
when the sky grows cruel,
that you speak in roars
when you're no longer heard.

You are not just blue—
you are every feeling
I’ve ever buried,
every tear the world
never saw me cry.

And I,
fragile yet fierce,
quiet yet alive,
found in your vastness
a mirror.

I do not visit you.
I return to you.
For in your depths,
I remember—
I am made of wild things too.

you light a match
the flame forgets
I close my eyes
echoes pass through us
I can't tell, is it
a mirror or a door
we are suspended in shapes
that keep on crying

Mortgage-bruised pilgrims
linger along Silver Strand,
pop caps against plywood boarding,
edges furred with salt-rust flakes
from storms that chewed the pier.

Seabee retirees
swap tide updates on porch steps;
third-generation surfers
stitch wax into their palms
and still call this south jetty 'church'.

Here my son and I rinsed sand
from our ankles with a garden hose,
him shrieking, laughing, shivering
when cold bit his feet.

I once yelled at him, raging
for dropping keys into surf,
as if that mattered more
than a day of chasing, wrestling in the tide.
He doesn’t remember.
I can’t forget.

Now, he’s taller than me,
vanishing downshore.

I stand outside, voices rise
in the salt-hard wind.
Barbecue smoke drifts
from driveways, tailgates,
settles into dusk-lit lawn chairs.

Boarded bungalows peel to raw board,
splintering porch rails;
nails weep orange along the grain.

A bike frame, chainless,
reddens into memory beside dune grass
still gripping sand.

There is grace in forgetting:
a tide lowers its voice,
sand swallows what was said.

i don't know how old i was, 8 or 10.

I climbed out the window
onto the roof of the garage.

it was summer.

I lied down
and gazed at the stars for hours.

i reached to touch moonbeams,
and with my finger
drew a circle around the north star.

i dissolved into the hush of stars
free of want or need.

a single heart beat.
I, the wind, moon, stars.

I long to lie on the roof, again,
gaze at the stars
and filled with wonder.

I carry your hands like waves breaking on the skin
your eyes get flammable like capsicum on innocent tongue
I have long conversations with this boiling sea
the sea bears the roundness of the moon
the moon reveals its wounds
the wounds shed their skins to feed
an undiscovered earth

I feel time running like a wild animal tnrough my body
the air might hide from itself in the frenzy of an embrace
the molecules of emotion create the music of muscles, of spheres
I watch this momentum of life unfolding, rising and decreasing
passion feeds the wind, the waters, the eartquakes, it dances on liminal edges
bound and unbound the pulse of creation, of destruction
I am so very quiet, as quiet as the retina that translates the light
when the light touches you my optic nerves get burned but look
how strange,
I see further away into the clarity of hands

slowly the mountains come out of the blue of morning,
they regain their face
light bathes them in its milk
I hide in the tall grass like a child
this self expands into the clouds behind the trees
an engulfing joy dissolves words into vowels
everything that exists  is wonder, a forgotten state of matter
time confesses a circle
the circle conjures  an earth so wild
the forest stores its prayers inside moss
the sacred hidden in the most profane  flower
an work of art with unknown author, every atom is colourful
I offer my skin as playground for butterflies
they can feel she's not so different from the skin of the earth
some hours are born by the self of rain
I wonder if the wind feels me
like I feel you in blooming nails

What makes life meaningful?

Understanding another's

pain and suffering–perhaps.

The air dances around you and silence looks
different now. The Dead Sea is alive again, stillness acquires a
name, the world quivers on a beach
covered with blind seashells. A giant who has come down
from the mountains is posing for a naive painter. Only
eagles feel
planetary alignment, they are the only ones who can
understand man's amazed look when the woman
comes riding a thirsty gryphon. Whatever is left of life
takes refuge in your dreams. The shade of the harbour is
only generous with the spleeping statues. Every day arises
from the blazing calendar, close to the scream of the siren
out at large. The past blooms out of the rock in the sea and
weighs on your heart. The sand hesitates: I am the
beginning.
In the red cells I see only you. Even the blind see the world
again
through the eyes of their own memories. Doing survey
missions
on the maps of the world, the dolphins ask
the purple red colour of the next eon whether night comes
from beyond words

by Ionel Bota, translated by Lidia Vianu

in the laboratory of life unseen words are sprouting
they decenter time or they hit themselves against
the windows like birds do
they circle the emotional memory of our aorta
they smell of dust mixed with blood
they search for that place in your gaze where
is never too hot