eight letters to you : viii

people are oceans, you once told me,
windblown and battered by storm driven winds,
broken hands reaching the distance between shores,
hearts as restless and wild as the waves,
always returning to the place it had once left behind.

***

a single glance across a crowded room,
and a sniper drew a bead on your heart
and sent flames raging through your chest,

but your next breath was of ice water 

and there you drowned, tied to a memory
that still leaves you breathless.

***

maybe, just maybe that first glance was
the beginning of a thousand endings
and a million unspoken words,
and maybe now, with your head under the waves
you'll feel like you can finally take your
first deep breath in years.

***

the words 'maybe' and 'someday' are always
inseparably linked, as if twelve letters
somehow became the entirety of our future,
as if what we are now is erased in the waves
of what we might someday (never) become.

***

but then, perhaps, the essence of us
is wrapped around those two words,
and maybe someday we'll move past the walls
we've built around ourselves and each other,
and maybe, someday, we'll realize that life
is about loving, rather than longing.

***

you said that people are oceans,
but even we are not nearly as powerful as we
would have others believe.
driftwood is stamped across our palms,
and we are rising and falling amidst
angry waves that forgot what they were
raging about years ago.

***

we're in the shallows, but you are (still) drowning,
choking on the saltwater flooding your veins,
gasping for the oxygen just out of your reach,
even though there is a lifeline at your fingertips.
you must understand that we are all broken, but
it is impossible to save someone who wants to drown.

***

and i will not drown with you.

***

( may 25th, 10:02 p.m.), mikailah autumn