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.

"Flesh—latticed in hush,
pinions bloom along their span—
pearled ache, ascending."
— (Dove in Bloom)

Vianne, you write of ache with wings,
of pain that rises, quiet and silver-lit,
as if sorrow itself could take flight.
Your words breathe in the hush of night,
leaving echoes in the marrow of silence.

"Moon spills in silver—
a fish arcs through drowning light,
the tide gulps its ghost."
— (Eclipsed Tide)

You catch the moment where light drowns,
where loss glows before vanishing.
A fleeting wisp, a spectral inhale—
a beauty held just long enough to ache.

"Willow bows, exhaled—
a hundred arms swaying slow,
braiding hush with time."
— (The Willow’s Breath)

Time does not pass in your verses—
it exhales, it braids itself into the wind,
swaying between presence and absence,
where every whisper lingers.

"Chevy lilts down arteries
stitched in coral marrow,
leather still inked with your laughter."
— (A Note Held Past Silence)

You write memory like it breathes,
like laughter can be sewn into the bones,
like voices don’t fade but dissolve
into the space between heartbeats.

"She dances where gravity forgets,
laughter drips slow as melting wax—
feral, fleeting, free."
— (Tiny Dancer)

There is something wild in your words,
something untamed, yet delicate—
a fleeting step beyond the known,
where even gravity dares not follow.  

Vianne, your poetry lingers—
like dusk humming against the tide,
like the hush before the willow exhales,
like a note held just past silence.

You don’t just write—
you let words breathe,
you let them ache,
you let them be.

And in that—
they are enough.