The Beach
Love
Love & loving used to come so naturally to me.
I loved so hard, so much, so innocently, so selflessly, so naively, so selfishly, so deeply…
I received that kind of love too
& Then life held me down &
Victimized the shit outta me.
I can remember distinctly the days when the cosmic shift started
I remember praying to God, pleading with her
Begging the universe to keep me wholehearted
To keep me, me
See, I was released into this world high on life
Just fascinated with the existentialism of it all
The visceral, the sensory, the metacognitive,
The sensual…inexplicable things
& Then one day, in my 20s perhaps
Someone tried to pour love on me
& Like MEDERMA on a surgery scar…
I was not sure it was working
The hurt over the years had formed a keloidal eclipse
One that I knew was fading,
Would eventually fade
But would never truly disappear
That's the thing
Healing be damned!
Nothing can reverse being cut open
A being cut open
Nothing can unopen you
Make it all truly disappear
“Let it go!”, I whisper to myself
The uncanny knack for wanting to hold onto those inexplicable phenoms of the universe, the moments, the way you felt… a curse
“At least you have life!”
These are the waves of gratitude
that run over the inescapable ridges
The coastline of what once was
A vast, pristine, untouched beach
Of love?
Years & years of water beaten rocks
A twinkling accumulation of scars turned
Into fine dust
It's the reason perhaps, I'm drawn
To the water,
To the beach,
To the sand,
To love & to be loved
So that I can remember & recover
So that the keloids aren't internalized
So that I can scream out my frustrations to Yemaya
Not to my “loved ones”
So that the water can beat me & my scars
Battle wounds & memories
Into a twinkling dust
So that I'm not alone in my solace,
But rather, in company,
Enveloped even
By the other beaten things
Rejoicing in the glory of our gathering
Each morsel in my toes
Stepping firmly into the burning hot parts
The parts that make you tiptoe,
Or jump
Or run
For reprieve
The cool, firm, padded down parts
The parts that only tiny, invisible sea crabs can penetrate
But most importantly, so that I will not
Forgive & forget what love can do
But rather remember & recover
The nature of love & the way I used to love so naturally.
