How I Became The Sea

The green-blue was summer holidays,
Days at the beach spent uncomfortably scratching at too-tight swimsuits
An embarrassing pink that stretched uncomfortably
I picked at the sand on my legs, brushed them off my knees
They made indents on their hands
To remind me they were there.

The foam was the time we had held hands and made a line,
Deeper in water we leant our heads back and felt the tide come in
Waves pushing us back
Dragging us forward into the current
A small foray into a life of dangerous living
Of toeing the line again, when we got back to school.

The seaweed floating beneath the current was my hair
Pooling around me like a mermaid of a shipwreck so long ago-
When I was child I thought all victims
Sunk to the bottom of the sea, would become part of it
(The Sea merely desired company)
They would resurrect Atlantis and sing songs

Until the water was full of them, until every crook in the back of
Their brains was a trickle, a spillet of splashing water
There would be blackness, and they too would become mermaids
Or water, swirling current
They would not die, no- they would be 
Infinite.

But when the Sea took you too, sent its invitation by a courier
REGISTERED POSTAGE, tucked it in the folds of Death's black cloak-
I could not tell myself the stories my mother told me
I could not imagine Atlantis in the grandeur of white stone
Of white marble and Corinthian columns-
Only the white face of your tomb.

Of your eyes, your eyes that would become hollow in the earth
Or in the fire, as your parents would have preferred-
It is of your eyes that I see standing on our cliff
Thinking of how you became the sea
And how, because you carry my heart with yours
I have become it, also.