tides ○ a collection of poems

i. forgetting

isn't it weird how i need other people to
fill me and light up my skin
because when they leave
i suddenly become full of craters

how in my mind i am still lying
next to you at night
when in reality all that's left of you
is a memory hidden in starlight
and a few letters somwhere in the back
of my dressers, the ink fading slowly
like the last polaroids of us in my mind

and someone told me the other day
it's not about you leaving me but about how you left

and i realized that love is like the tides
it leaves but it comes back,
pushing against you with the desire
to form you
and to leave driftwood
and broken shells
and sea glass
all over your skin

just like your kisses on my neck that
i still sometimes feel when
the wind is strong

maybe i can pick them up
and hide them in the pockets of my coat,
the red one you never told me it looked good on me,
to find them years from now
still the pale, salty scent of the sea sticking to them

i would smile and throw them back into the ocean
for the tides to swallow