"Three Steps to the Sea"

1.

Three more steps—her toes kiss the tide’s brink,

the horizon stitches sky to sea, a seam of blue

mirroring her pulse. Butterflies ascend her ribs,

wings brushing the ache of almost. She counts:

One. Two.

2.

The light he cast spills through her veins—

a prism peeling shadows from her marrow.

Deeper, it whispers. Salt air clings to her lungs

as waves hum a hymn only the brave can hold.

Three.

3.

The shadow waits, a jagged hymn in the shallows.

But her palms crack open—sunfire spilling—

and she sees: her fists were never empty.

She shines like a fire that drives away the dark,

the sunrise lies quiet in her voice.

4.

And I, the moon—a quiet follower— circle her brightness.

My dents hurt, but I shine blue through the emptiness, a beacon for her broken pieces.

Even solitude wears constellations.

5.

When she trembles, I etch her name in tides.

When she forgets, I sing the sun’s old refrain:

You are the light you begged the world to be.

Three steps back, she finds the shore—

and in her wake, the shadow drowns.