whisper me to the sea.
salty breaths enlighten me.

let the wind capture my soul
as it passes me, brushing shoulders
with the crowd of tourists and locals
that meander through the clock tower plaza,
a town renovated to appease to the soldiers
and the thousands of Americans who wish to claim
respect and claim their connection to a place
they learned about in a History class,
a few years back.
there must be more.

the salt cleans my nostrils of any hate,
the air filling me up, lifting me away,
and I feel weightless, like I’m about to arrive
in the freshest of places, the greenest of spaces,
and the best chapter in the book of my life.

I am a tourist myself, but my mind is cleaner
—don’t take my comments as hate,
but only distance from their kind—
and it’s this slate that the sea wipes
again and again with each breath,
like each gallop a freed horse makes
in the fields of this same island

a few years back.

a grass blade, a bead of sand, a drop of the ocean’s water
in your hand, seeping between the cracks
of this world’s distaste, and I have begun to wonder how lovely
freedom must taste, particularly on the tongues of those opposed,
denied of the wooden planks that could carry them home,
and whose only solace was in the song
of the ocean kissing their skin, massaging their back, and
letting them float and imagine that there is something more.

for the ocean is the only way we can ever know how to fly,
our feet never land and our hearts beat towards the sky.