6.11.22

You said you wanted to write about the ocean, and you are. Walking down the street the past few days, trying to be here with a quiet h, as in holy. here, holy, here, holy, here, holy, here, holy, here, holy. Yes the ocean is a metaphor that can only be used to describe itself. You are trying to love the city without giving yourself to it. Once you loved somebody who you gave yourself to, without being asked. The poem will not break here. When the wind blows through this poem, which is a life, it bows low to the dirt it came from. Let's bow together. Once you thought you had a place in this world and you kneeled at the water's edge with your lips to the wet sand and said thank you in every language you could remember. You apologized for what came before you and what will come after. You walked down the street in New York City and you realized that everywhere was the master's house. You said I'm so sorry for making this my home. You looked at your hands and they were red from war or anger or shame or guilt. Whose ocean is this? This poem won't break. You wrote to your dad: what is the meaning of life? And then you laughed and laughed and threw your phone across the bed. Last night you spoke to mommy in your head. You said mommy, I'm scared. Mommy, adulthood is long and strange and steep. Once, as a child I felt as if I was always slipping downhill, earth loose underneath my feet. Now, everyday I wake up and face a long climb upwards to somewhere I don't know I'll ever reach. This hill I cannot climb. It overlooks the ocean, which touches both shores of an empire I cannot bow too. May I one day rest. May I know stillness. May I see that every place is the same place. I am walking down the street. I can hear the trees talking overhead. They bless us with every step, despite everything we've done to them. 

here, holy, here, holy, here, holy, here, holy, here, holy, here