I am who I am.That much is certain.You’re trapped in the here and now.That is your sentence.I flipped the pages.I penned my name beneath the ending. After wandering through oceans, forests, mountains, memories, and unfinished portraits, the poem finally arrives somewhere still. Not at certainty about another person. But at certainty about the self. For
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I stared at the painting on my wall.You were once a drawing,a sketch of some sort.My feeble attempt at a smirk failed.Beyond all your disguised charm,there was nothing but a charade.Everything remained the same.My ink-bled hand kissed the art. After confronting the forgotten woman behind the ocean, the poem arrives at another quiet realization. I
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I gestured toward the way out.All along,I imagined you as some sort of premonition—the retaliationof the woman I locked inside her prison.I tossed bloody branches onto the ground.Burning papers traced a paththrough the middle of the vast land.I implored you to leave.You didn’t. If the previous section allowed the ocean to speak, this one finally
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It’s me, as you can see.I’m the ocean.You didn’t drown.You didn’t leap.You fledand got lost in the forest.Whatever you chose to do,it had nothing to do with me and you.You showed me your scars,but ran the moment you saw mine.You were disillusioned by what you found.Was there remorse you refused to face?I’m confused.The echoes of
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At this point, there was no doubt about it.Your face was trying to say something.You were pale.You weren’t moving.After the first bait and switch,the rest were masterful.Yeah, I remember.You were bored.Why did you have to be so stoic?I appear sharp on the outside;it didn’t help you decide.From your stillness,I knew the investigation had concluded. If
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Someone died.Was there a rescue?Did someone drown?I dipped my feet too deep.What am I saying?You never even touched the surface.What happened to testing the water? If Part 1 introduced the ocean, Part 2 steps into it. The calm surface established earlier begins to fracture. The language becomes urgent. Fragmented. Interrogative. The poem no longer observes.
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My mind was blown when the clock read six forty-seven.I could feel you creeping into my thoughts,calm as the ocean,like waves lapping against the shore—the threatening flood hidden beneath still water. Into the Ocean lingered in my mind long before I ever wrote its first line. After finishing the first three installments of The Seven
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What Prompted This Poem? Some poems arrive quietly. Others arrive like a reckoning. I started keeping diaries when I was a child. Looking back, I realize that writing gave me an unusual awareness of myself—both profound and incomplete. I knew what I felt. I could name my emotions. I could fill pages describing my anger,
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Where This Poem Began The earliest seed of Into the Ocean was planted long before the poem itself existed. On March 27, 2022, while brainstorming ideas for a book that had suddenly arrived in my mind late that night, I wrote a line in my notes: “Secrets are buried just beneath the surface.” At the
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I set the cup back on the table.The smell of wet earth rose softly.My screen lit the room.Evening settled in. I padded once more through the alcove:the empty chair, old receipts,unread messages, notes in book margins,photographs slowly fading. Somehow, I wished to return to the field again—not to remember,but to stand where thingsdo not ask
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