letter to a young poet/letter by sea

dear beloved,
i recieved your wonderful note today anchored at low tide. your words drift into me like seahorns, round and polished by the distance i pray holds you warm tonight. i see your eyes glimmer there and smile.
last time our hands touched you held me lock-step with those eyes. i felt the impatient gravity aching. i felt it in this shell of mine and winced... still, like a gentleman, you kissed me once and so tenderly on my cheek, and whisper-dared i be so bold to love you. and to love again fearlessly, for love's sake alone, if for nothing else...
and yet, my gentle man, i hold your whispers with me. a-light, here, in chest hollows scraped out by wayward stars and talons. should i share in the flame you seek to grow with me i must first confess the weight of these waves, places they've dragged me - places you couldn't yet know.
i hear your heart singing from the shore, but you have not been where i have been. not seen what i have seen.
you send songs from the promontory, behind a railing and shelter of borrowed trees. they come in glowing dream-bubbles of "yonder blue" and dolphin gloss and islands rare and rich. but you have not seen what i have seen. you've known doldrums in your chair and despair for a moment's boredom which lays its hand on your head, as any endearing mother would, and takes your temperature. but you have not been where i have been - left for dead and breathless, too. and this, of all things, is the welcomed port: for hardest of all, before arriving even there, you throw your horses over-board - and the gaping swallow of sea's deep indifference splashes wildly only in your own isolated soul.
and storms that seem to rock and roll so rhythmically for you, choreographed jerks and turns with which you dance comfortably - are not the squalling swells that WILL crush you where I have been. hidden reefs to gut you and arrest your calling north. titan fog, and phantom moons, and sharks: you see them from a vantage point on occasion only, and marvel at spectacular action bustling on the surface. you prize an assumption of surviving. but they WILL make a wreckage of you. bring you eye to eye with the fact you are mince. salted, skin-on, rip-torn mince. and that's a hurt which shreds through your beautiful bones so thoroughly you WILL not be able to tell at all if the pain is yours you feel, or the whole ocean's itself? these are your mermaids with their purses. and these, yet, are mere mites that crawl on the farthest tips of tentacles sprawling, hunting, ascending from some deeper place - always...
now you would board this ship with me and bring with you such pretty maps drawn in cheerful flowers and promise-lands that float on horizons that never wrinkle... but you've not been where i have been.
tomorrow i resume to mend the sails that are mine alone to mend. in the selkie light i WILL raise them before another day folds, and think fondly how you look upon my scars and dimples - all: framed in the blindness of your affections, for that is your charm. but i can not set course for the distance that holds you now. i WILL not return in safety, but to reach you with these words that say i WILL love fearlessly. and for love's sake, alone. where the wild things are. and if you should be so bold, my sweet, you know where you will find me...

Reviews

[Billy]

This letter is a beautiful, emotional, and sometimes melancholic commentary on the difference between experience and perspective. The language is so expressive, rhythmic and vulnerable. it was a real pleasure to read.
I’m not sure why but this line really connected with me in this moment, “i must first confess the weight of these waves."