Someday when I am old and weathered
I will look back on this day
And feel alive again.
Across the years
I’ll slip like sand
And I’ll be there in the shocking cold water
Sun slanting through a hazy sky
Watching the light touch your bare shoulders.
I discover a new kind of beauty whenever I look at you
Something harsh and soft at the same time
Like the ocean is.
I followed you in
Entranced as always
And the cold stealing the sensation from me
Did not dim the strange pull I feel from you.
It was confusing
Floating in that sea of icy water
Seeing my feelings made real
Pushing and tugging at me
Something vast and lovely and
Inescapable.
Something that could stop my heart.
Even there I felt it more than I felt the tide
More than I felt the cold,
More than everything: it swallows all light and all thought.
A modest part of me told me to look away,
Although I watched with innocence,
As the water sank from your collarbones and rose again,
But I couldn’t
So I just kept my distance.
You belonged there,
Something wild and powerful and changeable,
Something hypnotic,
A force of nature.
And it was beautiful, to me,
It was right-
I couldn’t turn from it.
It’s little things you don’t notice
Or maybe you do, and you never say.
Lying in the sand,
I watched the shadows deepen at your jaw as the sun dipped lower.
We laughed,
And sometimes you would meet my eyes and I would feel
Cold all over again
Like I was lost at sea
And happy to be there.
What a strange place we’re in.
What a strange place I’m in.
I could look and look at you all day,
I could listen to the cadence of your voice for hours.
It’s a battle
Not to get too caught in your gravity
And just freeze like a photo
Trying to remember you as if when I blink you’ll disappear.
The waves would hit me and push me back a step
And your laughter would float over them and join mine
And beneath it all I still felt that irresistible call, that unstoppable force
The thing that pulls me toward you.
I let it take hold of me,
But not move me.
I let it consume me the way it does
Went still, arms spread, and let the waves hold me up, my smiling eyes always searching for you
And always finding you in the folds of the water.
The way I move around you
The times I choose to keep my distance and the times I let myself be close
The careful way I study your face
Trying to remember it, trying to understand what I feel when I’m near you
The little things I do for you-
It’s all love.
It’s all the love I have just
Pouring out of me into the world,
And no wonder people look at us.
I’m surprised it doesn’t push them all back with its force.
I’m surprised it doesn’t push you back,
But somehow you seem to live well in it
For now.
You seem, even, to let it in.
Sometimes I’m sure you’ve realized,
I joke about it, but I think you already understand-

If you had walked off into the sea,
I’d have followed you like the path the moon leaves on clear nights
I’d have pressed the breath from my lungs
And found the bottom.
I’d have let the cold fill my veins and my bones and my mind
And given myself
Gladly
To a pull stronger than reason
And stronger than fear.

I’d have a sunk my fingers into the icy sand
And followed you all the way to silence.