Foam lines move outwards

From oars that pierce stillness

Spreading just to fade.

When existing is the same as breathing in water
Drowning, sinking to the bottom of the deepest sea
As the sun gets tired from making everyone else shine
And dips her weakened toes into the depths of what is
Slipping past what could be and slumbering
At the edge of every river i’ve cried
Trying to be more than the dead end of the void.

In the shadow of water
I know your true face.
not in the shadow
but in the feeling of
being in it.

…do you understand?

there’s a coolness
that wraps around me
just right,
like when evening comes
and the southern sun
finally relents its strength of illumination
to the unknowing of night.

through the shade of a wave
opaque enough to dilute
the intensity of the light
but not enough
to stop it from reaching me,
I recognize you.  

who are you
that you should linger
in my inner sight
like a sunspot
staining my vision wherever I look,
changing colors
behind my closed eyes?

a stranger?

perhaps I’ve known you
in other lives.
maybe we were lovers.
maybe we were almost lovers.
maybe this is our dance.
we circle each other
like leaves in an eddy,
a brief swirl of proximity
before we’re shot back out
to the flow of the river
like children on a slide,
laughing in our innocence—
in our ignorance.

then comes the
inevitable separation,
the distance,
the peculiar ambiguity
we wear like a skin—
like a camouflage.

but I still see you,
from time to time,
behind the eyes of a stranger

and

I still feel you
whenever I am in
the shadow of water.

I hear whispers
on waters
that crash and swell
a calling
to my distant lover
who never returned
to lift the dews of my sorrow,
the fog is still there
and i wait, aching—
to be seen,
to be joined,
to be merged
as one