i hope my words are strange and wondrous,

like kisses that quiet all things superfluous,

so that we can all stop and

listen

sweeping in pieces and washing out debris.

i have run my fingers through the white crests,

and soaked my heels in the tail ends of waves,

rolling back into the deep.

i've been changed, by my encounter with the sea.

in a detached sort of moment, i can see the salt-crusted tips of my

hands as they leap from letter to letter,

you see,

i am writing about you.

the salt crystals they leave a powdery residue over the

squares of my keyboard,

a frosting that belongs only to me.

your heart,

is on my fingers, in my shoes

its on my shelf in little glass bottles

and in the gritty spaces between my words.

i have picked up the seashells and held them to the light,

watched as daylight folded in on itself to welcome

an inevitable night.

in your heart the sun is rising,

in your heart the storm is rising,

in your heart the tide is rising,

in your heart the ground is rising.

and i am a sideliner,

charting with an attempted emotional precision

how you change and shift,

how you move and live.

and these days you're running around my ankles,

telling me secrets of your joys, your fears, your sorrow and pain.

i feel it, i tell you.

don't worry, i'll remember, i tell you.

so i sit here today,

thinking of you, and you and you and you.

the smell of possibility, a new sense of horizon,

the sound of emotional capacity creating new lines.

and my words they are for you.

one day your waters will wash away the last traces of my footprints,

left in the sand.

maybe one day you'll forget the touch of my fingers,

swirling you up in love, delight and the ecstasy of discovering.

but i've saved you,

in my pocket.

i've encased you,

in my bottles.

i've sprinkled you,

beneath my keys.

and i've built you,

into these words.

and thrown them out to sea.