The Last Warm Thing….

October keeps the sea somewhere
she can't quite reach,
a rumor of salt on the wind,
a memory of light that won't let go.

But I remember how she looked
with the sun caught in her hair,
how the water found her shoulders
like it had been searching all year,
how she laughed and the whole tide
seemed to lean in close to listen.

Those were the days the light was patient.
The evenings stretched like honey,
gold spilling over the horizon
as if the sky refused to end.
We floated on our backs and let
the warm sea hold us, careless,
weightless, hers and mine.

She traced the current on my arm
and told me the ocean never forgets
a single body it has held.
So we gave ourselves to it,
every scar, every sigh,
every promise whispered into foam
that the salt swore it would keep.

Now the days are shorter, sharper,
the air already turning its collar up.
But I still feel her in the falling sun,
still taste the sea on ordinary mornings,
still hear the gulls in every hollow wind
that finds the window.

And somewhere out past the cold,
past the gray, past the going,
the water is still blue and waiting,
still warm as the first time she held me,
still promising, softly,
that summer is not lost,
only sleeping,
only leaning toward the day
it finds us again.