And yet its peaceful. It's fulfilling. No more being the bigger person.
I'll accept the embrace, it feels so familiarly cold
That I can't help but lean into any ounce
Of acceptance I can get.

The ocean will know those steps like I did
And it knows me better than I ever will.

[ #worldpoetryday ]

The seventh step-
my vision is black.
I can hear screaming, and the dull of the oceans call.
It is muffled,
mouth filled with salt.
The blackness is all consuming,
filling my throat with cold and rigid sand.

The sixth step is worn and rounded.
The shale has eroded it beyond recognition,
battered until it is shaped the way the waves
wanted it.
Victim to the will of the sea.
It has accepted it's fate. It has given in to its change.
There is nothing left for it to do
than decay.
Rot.

The fifth step is broken in two.
The crack, a cavernous hole in the architecture,
a ravine of weeds and kelp.
An open wound
that the ocean inflicted with its undying rage.
It was never given a chance to heal.
It simply poured salt into the injury
and told it to "man up."

It wants to be lost, but not quite enough
to vanish completely into the abyss.
It calls me.

The fourth step is barely visible.
Fish have nibbled its edges, and
it has grains of sand upon its top face that
wriggle like ants in the waves.
It feels lonely here, as if
this step is attempting to be forgotten.

It's got a lot of curiosity within its atoms.
A need to find out what may be deeper.
The third step is the point of no return,
when the sea is simply too close
and the door too far to come back to.

The third step is dipping its toes in perpetually,
as if testing the water.
It's been a bit battered by the shale- dented
and dinged up,
but it has character.

This step has seen anger. It has seen bitterness.
It has tasted all the screams I have sent to the oceans maw,
hoping they may leave me
and be swallowed in the blue.
They never were.

The second step is coated in salt.
When the tide is highest, and it seems
to lap at the door,
it leaves a slick coat of seasalt across the rim of stone
and settled crabs between the cracks.

The first step is dry, cracked,
like a desert in the peak of summer,
craggy and carved upon by feet and shoetreads.
It has seen a kiss,
and a thousand tears.
I left my heart on that step knowing it may
be safe from the tide,
but never from the people who sat upon it.

I told her I would only sit on the first step,
and that I wouldn't get my socks wet.
"Just don't come inside with
seaweed in your shoes," she called.