I didn’t leave
to find peace.
I left
because staying
felt too sharp-
too full
of empty.
Breathing around me,
but I felt
like air wasn’t mine anymore.
I walked past faces
that didn’t see me-
not really.
The boat waited,
small, like me-
unnoticed,
barely holding shape
in the grey.
I set off
without direction,
not looking back.
What would be the point?
Yet every now and then
I caught myself ….
Looking back.
A song played
somewhere beneath the silence.
Not loud.
Not hopeful.
Just-
there.
There, like something broken
still trying to hum.
A record arriving to its center,
skipping-
Click…….Click……Click
The sea didn’t welcome me.
It didn’t care.
Why should it?
It just stretched on,
cold and endless,
a mirror
for the weight I carried
and couldn’t name.
Waves brushed the boat
like distant fingers.
Even the wind
seemed tired.
I sat,
still,
until the silence inside me
matched the silence around me.
I didn’t cry.
Not then.
The tears had dried
years ago-
like salt on skin,
cracked and brittle.
I thought maybe,
if I stayed out long enough,
I’d forget
how it felt.
But memory is a tide
that always returns,
bringing back the same wreckage,
the same shit-
just arranged
a little differently.
I let it come.
The loneliness.
The regret.
The slow ache
of remembering
There was no epiphany.
No sudden sun.
No great revelation.
Just the sound
of a song
I didn’t know the words to
but sang anyway.
Because silence
needs company sometimes.
And maybe that’s enough
for now.
