Gentle strides of water balloon my body
in patterned cycles.
You're leading my lungs
while the air dances between us.

Love expands, swelling tides
pull on anchors embedded in my heart.
"I'm still here!" you sweepingly percuss to me.
I feel the water become denser –
your presence is amplified.

My heart sways.
Wind bites like ice where you don't blanket me.
Fragmented rays of light
hit my skin in an array of melodies.
Breathing is easy now.
Quiet now.

The horizon unwrinkles.

Your absence, the stillness of it,
carries a calm disparate from before the storm
Your tides have changed
the water and

*me