Wind, capture my soul—

pass through me,

brush shoulders with the crowd of tourists and locals

who meander through the clock tower plaza,

wishing to claim their connection

to a place they learned about in a History class

-

a few years back.

There must be more.

-

Salt, clean my nostrils of any hate—

the air fills me up, lifting me away,

And I feel weight-

less,

like I’m about to arrive

in the freshest of places, the greenest of spaces.

-

I am a tourist myself, yet my mind is cleaner

—but please, don’t take my comments as hate,

rather just distance from their kind—

and it’s this slate that the sea wipes

again and again with each foamy breath

like the gallops a freed horse makes

in the fields of this same island

-

a few years back.

There is something more.

-

A grass blade, a bead of sand, a drop of the ocean’s

water in your hands, seeping between the cracks

of this world’s distaste.

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,

of the ocean’s kissing that lets them float and imagine

that there is something more.

-

Whisper me to that sea.

Salty breaths enlighten me.