The House at Low Tide

I’ve loved you like someone guessing

how far a lighthouse is by the ache in their eyes.

Always north.

Always some kind of lost.

I never said

how silence can feel cleaner

than saying I’m sorry when I don’t know if I am.

Some nights, I dreamed of walking into the sea

until the water stopped needing me back.

There’s a boy I don’t talk about.

He’s still up there in the attic

wearing shoes that cut into his skin,

praying to the lightbulb

as if blinking meant somebody heard.

The ocean never tells

what it’s keeping.

I’ve learned to speak that way too

quiet, with a little salt on my lips.

I saw my father once

just standing at the window,

watching the world go by

like it wouldn't let him off

Now I eat beside ghosts.

They chew slow

like they’ve got all the time I don’t.

Sometimes I wonder

how much of me came from things I never agreed to carry.

You asked if I was happy.

I smiled

the way people do when they've practiced it enough

to make it seem like a yes.

Most mornings, I pretend

I’m the kind of person

who gets up

without needing to make a deal with the dark.

There’s a shoebox in my closet

full of letters I never sent

and pill bottles with someone else’s name on them.

Paper and plastic

full of all the things I was almost brave enough to do.

I’ve stood in doorways

with a lit match in my hand,

thinking maybe light

would feel better than holding it in.

But even fire has its cost.

I wrote you something once.

Folded it, walked it to the storm drain,

let the rain pull it away.

The ink ran

like it didn’t want to be part of me anymore.

This poem

is the only thing I haven’t thrown away.

It’s a door, half open.

Weathered and sea stung.

Waiting for you

or no one at all.