You are the shore upon which I break.

Yours are the tiny shards of brown glass that cut my frothing waters to size.

Yours are the contours and boundaries that contain me,
That shape me, that tell me where I begin and where I end.

On your fine-grained shores I find small treasures.
A few footsteps, with the heels etched deep,
The tough, yet brittle, iridescent half moons of shells,
Hearts holding hands, hands holding names,
Names whispering stories to the wind that crests above me.

And on your shore, I leave odds and ends.
Seaweed that aspires to grow above the water,
Driftwood that scouts for new homes with every tide,
A few solitary slippers that have seen better days,
Plastic that could be an offering, or a misguided prayer.
Fish that want to walk the land,
Rocks that I have pounded to fine and not-so-fine dust (what can I say, I do my best),

And in return for these petty things, you bring people and stories close to me,
You show them that I am a thing of wonder,
That I can glint in the sun, and dance with the white-topped mouths of hundreds of tiny waves,
That I can be as safe and warm as mothers' wombs, and I can teach them to swim again,
That I can be second skin to them, that in me, they can be weightless and free.

And, that I can turn upon myself and everything else in dark, black storms that seem endless,
That I can rage and rage, and howl and shriek, till my fury is spent beating across your sand,
Till the clouds limp away, bedraggled and mere wisps of their fuller, intimidating selves,
Till the sun and your shores pound better sense into me, till land seems as safe as an anchor,
Till hard rock is something I begin to embrace instead of battering against in numb fear,
Till daylight seems less hostile again.

Your shores soak me in, and I learn wonderful things in the burrows of angry crabs and in the moats of sand castles abandoned by children,

On good days, you lead me to lakes that sweeten me,
To little, shallow rectangles of soil that trap my salt,

You give land to birds that bring me mangroves and weed my waters,
That nest in me and give forth life that flies and swims,

Living proof, and the fruit of our strange meeting,
A lifeform that sees, perhaps, the best of both worlds,


And so, time passes.

My waters never age, they merely shrink, or grow,
And your shores, they bring me mountains, sometimes islands, sometimes, deserts,

And so it goes, this containment, this exchange of earth and water,
This knowledge that holds the secrets to all of creation,
This union, of you and I.