The sea hums ancient songs,  
pulling me into its salt-laced poem.  
Barefoot, reckless, wild and free,  
I chase the whispers where mermaids flee.  

Your words are waves, restless and true,  
stirring tides in silent blue.  
Each line a shore where echoes meet,  
where longing and freedom softly greet.  

Does trust return on gentle wing,  
like birds that find their way to spring?  
Or once it’s lost, does it remain,  
a shadow cast, a lingering stain?  

Yet even shadows shift with time,  
stitched by light, unstitched by rhyme.  
Where trust has frayed, it learns to mend,  
worn, but never at its end.  

I am the wind, the desert breeze,  
the ocean spray and rustling leaves.  
I am the hush of dawn before the rise,  
the twilight’s breath as shadows creep.  

You are the sigh between each tide,  
a fleeting spark the stars confide.  
Unbound, untamed, you touch and go,  
carrying whispers only the wild will know.  

I am, and I am not,  
in the space between breaths.  
A shadow of light, a whisper of death,  
where time and breath are never what they seem.  

Between dream and wake, you weave a place,  
where fleeting moments leave no trace.  
Yet even as they slip and fade,  
the wind still knows the path you made.  

—For Nancy Maine, whose words wander like the sea and sing like the wind.  

And I—  
I listen close, where silence sways,  
where echoes breathe between the waves.  
For voices like yours never fade—  
they simply find new skies to claim.