Coastlines

I remember thinking to myself, haven’t I learned enough?
But maybe this lesson wasn’t meant for me.

From loving you, I know a few things to be true:
I know how to love.
I know how to be a parent.
I know how to stay.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s for you.
You threw away the ocean for a kiddie pool
because you were too scared to swim.

But water isn’t always meant to be calm and clear.
Sometimes it knocks the air from your lungs.
Sometimes it pulls you under. 
Sometimes it carries you farther than you meant to go.

Your body has known this depth before. It’s not all that unfamiliar.
You grew your son in water—dark, warm, sacred water.
Water that held him before the world did.
Before I did.

He came from the deep.
And still, you stand on the shore, water brushing your ankles,
wondering why you feel thirsty.
Forgetting you were made of water, too.

I thought you were built for oceans.
You tried to catch me in your fingers, but I slipped through.
Then you tried to make me a puddle,
because the magnitude of my sea
was more than you could hold.

Vast. Deep. Alive.

Such a pity to blame the water for being too wet
and the ocean for being too deep,
rather than admit your hands were simply too small to hold it.

I would have carried you.
I would have taught you how to swim.
But you never stepped past your knees.

And now, there is salt where softness used to be.

The ocean was not meant to be held in handfuls.
Never meant to be contained.

It carves coastlines instead.