My grandfather tells me I am too sensitive
He is sheltered in cardigans and sits in an old armchair,
A walking stick next to his feet.
He is not quite shipwrecked but people around him have already started drowning.

He says my heavy heart is wrapped too tightly in self-made bubble wrap,
that I’ve been so busy looking at my feet I didn’t realise the ‘Handle With Care’ sign has been ripped away from my collarbones.
And all I know is that the world is volatile
and when it storms, my god, I feel the wrath of it in anywhere I used to call home.

I think he forgets he was a soldier of the sea
And so now when he sees the fading scrapes on my wrists and
waves of old blood
He cannot understand me.

He is a tall man.
He spent his youth looking over gates into better places,
Seeing boys with parents who had colour in their faces.
Maybe we chase colours like forest covered streams to their final destination
And perhaps that is why he liked surfing oceans rather serving his mother her endless medication

I wonder if he found a piece of peace in the heart of the ocean
And if since then, solid ground seems so broken.
He is unstable on his leather soles and I think he still misses the kisses he once stole
But now, he is a soldier of solitude and talking without thinking
He is a captain of old bones and loved ones that won’t stop sinking.

My father tells me I have a kind heart.
A good heart.
I think it beats more softly than my grandfather’s.
I can be found in the shallow water, minding my step.
But if I ever look for Sailor George’s,
I know, far away in the distance, out where the sea meets its reflection, it will always be left.