i promise.

just keep holding on.

the water will pull you out, yes,
but it will always push you back.

and i will always be
the shoreline.

i will hug you back,
and kiss the salt
from your eyelids.

until there is nothing left,
nothing but your heart.
and i will feed your heart
to the moon,
and the moon will
throw your heart
to the sky,

and you will be the stars.

so just keep holding on.

before the storm.

you once told me
i was like the sea.

that i was rough,
wild, untame-able.
but that only meant
i had a mind of my own,
or so i thought.

and then you told
me what you meant,
that it was the wind
that changed my fates.

it was the wind
who was guiding me,
changing me, moving
my currents.

you told me
i did not follow where
i wanted to go,
that my decisions were never mine.

if i manage to pull myself
out of the water,
i'll be waiting for the wind
to blow you down.

gods of death.

persephone once told me
it was warmer
living with her God of Death,
closer to the heart of the earth.

she told me
it was colder
in our world
that she regretted eating
the fruit her mother gave her.

but it was irresistible,
and so, it tied her down
once more,
until the leaves changed colours.

and then she told me,
her heart was always cold.

but her mother shook
her head, and scooped
more food onto her plate.

trees and me.

sometimes screaming is not
hard enough.
if i was the one to follow you,
take a day
in your foosteps even,
would i still see your mistakes
for what they are?

this is a lonely life,
full of words that don't
mean what they should,
what they do.

but i know what steps
not to take,
to keep my distance,
the way you never did.

because sometimes my screaming
is just not hard enough
for you to hear.

stormwaters.

this was the year
the rain came early
it dragged you out of bed
when you heard it pounding,
maybe it sounded
as if someone
was knocking.

this was the year
the house
got flooded

-no surprise to us,
we had not ignored
the evacuation call.

but you are stubborn,
and you stayed.
you yelled, you held
on to everything
we'd left behind
-most of it.

then the phoneline went down
and we didn't hear from you.
"not much difference,"
mother said.

when we came home
we found you
floating alone
"not much difference,"
i said.

but the rains had not
changed you,
had not even
pierced your skin.

instead you told us
of the great flood of
our ancestors,
stories from our past.

oh you were proud.

but you still could not
see what you
were not holding.