[I often think of that January morning]

I often think of that January morning together, dreaming

of nothing as we walked through the waves.

Lying dizzily on the cliffs, we listened to echoes upon echoes

of the sea incessantly singing her serenade of blue.

We hugged goodbye.  I walked home and made coffee,

then sat and poured my thoughts over a journal’s patient page.

I remember your thick handwriting on that white page

as your letters arrived, tangible amidst my dreaming.

I huddled by the flickering fire and read it with my coffee,

filling and unfilling the warm mug in murky waves.

The ink I wrote to you in was always black, never blue,

and I’d imagine you sitting and reading my words in echoes.

Just as my memories of you began to feel like echoes,

you came home.  Measuring the miles decreasing with every page

of the novel that dwindled between your hands, as the deep blue

sky darkened and embellished around you.  You began dreaming

as the train travelled through snow and ever nearer to the waves,

and to the place where I anxiously waited with my coffee.

Hours later we lay on the floor of your house, sipping sleepy coffee

as your guitar filled the room with the sound of careful echoes.

Even now I remember little of reading The Waves

except your soft smile each time my fingertips turned a page,

and every night I watched your mind dreaming

before my unconscious swallowed me like an ocean of blue.

The sadness settled once you’d left.  I became blue,

artificially structuring my days around coffee

before falling asleep in the hope I would avoid dreaming

of you.  The thoughts still hurt.  Like bruises, existing as echoes

of former pain written across me, transforming the body’s blank page.

I don’t understand why you never came back.  The waves

always return to comfort the shore.  The pain ached in waves.

I painted my feelings in layer upon layer of blue

until watercolours splattered my sleeves and the drowning page.

Absentmindedly I missed the jar of water, swirling brushes in my coffee.

As much as I tried to forget, the memories resurfaced in echoes,

and always I found myself staring at the sea.  Waking, sleeping, dreaming.

I am still dreaming; everything breaks over me in waves.

Like a seed listening to echoes through earth, I long for water and a sky of blue.

Like a seed I want to grow.  But all I have is cold coffee, and an empty page.