Update: new video for this poem on my YT channel – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPCddTdPllU

Where do you go, when you lose someone,
You ask

I go to the sea

I whisper her name into the waves, and let the sea carry my love, the memories of things that never had a chance to happen, and the way she crinkled her eyes when she laughed, to distant shores so she will never be forgotten.

Where do you go, when you lose hope,
You ask

I go to the sea

I look out at its grey and roaring eternity and think about what has ever been and will ever be. And it is not that we are small and our actions meaningless. It is that something crawled out of that foaming, whirling mass and became glorious, bursting life. It is the will and effortlessness shaping jagged rocks and shards of glass into smoothness in your palm.

Where do you go, when you lose yourself,
You ask

I go to the sea

First gently, and then completely. I cast myself into the waves. I dive all the way down and get sand and seaweed tangled in my hair and I know what it is to truly be lost, to let go. But when I kick off from the ground, feel my muscles carve a new path through the water, and break the surface, I chose to be found.

Where do you go, when you cannot go to the sea,
You ask

I sit very quietly, I close my eyes, and I let the sea come to me. As familiar as the old grey grandmother who held you on her lap and sang to you. As familiar as Father’s tobacco smoke. As familiar as the smell of greasy potatoes, malt vinegar and newspapers on a Friday. So is the sea to me.

And when I really need it, I can plant my bare feet in that wet sand right at the water’s edge, and be home.