The Horizon Keeps You…

I come to where the land surrenders,

to this edge of memory carved by salt and time,

and watch the waves rehearse their ancient return,

always leaving, always coming back,

like the echo of your laughter

I still hear in certain kinds of wind.

The gulls cry out your name in a language

I am only now learning to speak.

It is a tongue of absence,

of spaces where someone used to be,
of shadows that hold their shape
long after the body has gone.

I bring you here in small ways,

a stone that fits the palm like your hand once did,
the particular silence between words
 we used to share over coffee,

the way you would have loved 
how the light fractures on the water today.

The ocean does not forget.

It keeps everything we lose,

shells, ships, the names of the living,

stirred in its dark, patient depths,

polishing them smooth as prayer beads.

And I understand, sitting here,
 that missing you is not empty.

It is full.

Full of the cliffs we climbed,
the futures we sketched in sand,

the thousand versions of you
 that still walk beside me,

slipping through the world
 like light through water.

You are not gone.

You are the horizon I keep walking toward,

the tide that returns no matter how far,
the salt on my lips that tastes of something 
sweet and everlasting.

I will sit here until the stars come and I will tell them about you.

How you were real.

How you remain.