Sail to me
across the ocean made from my tears—
formed by the hollow you left.
I built this sea for you,
so you'd always have a way back
to where we began.
Reach me
in the places I've buried deep,
the ones even I am afraid to name.
Trace the outlines I've hidden,
and show me I was never
so easily forgotten.
Tell me the story of us,
not through my memory's window—
but in the way you survived it,
in your truths,
the tender ones you held close
when night refused to let you rest,
and I was the ache you couldn't name.
Tell me I still live in your quiet.
Speak the moments I never saw—
where you paused,
where you turned away,
where you missed me
and never said.
Is there a portrait of me
hanging in the corners of your mind?
Paint memories with the palette of our love—
when no one was watching.
Use the colours we made together—
the rise of us,
blush pinks bleeding into amber light,
the bruised violet of our breaking.
Do you still hear me
in the hush between songs?
Do the lyrics still reflect us back at you?
Show me your wounds—
the ones left
when we unravelled
into strangers
who still knew each other too well.
Let me see the shape of your life
without me in it.
Come to me again—
on the tide of every tear I shed for you.
This ocean remembers.
It knows you
better than I do now.
Let it carry you
to the shoreline of our time,
where we loved once—
wild and unguarded,
a flame burning too brightly to last.
There,
we still exist—
untouched by time,
preserved in the hush
between wave and wind,
between what was
and what is now.
A word painting of the shape grief takes after a relationship is lost.