I Saw the Shoreline, but I Didn't Fall to My Knees

A hopeless fraudster, an all – consuming sense of failure

It was a snarling, writhing creature

It followed like a shadow, an unwanted partner

Feeding on my uncertainty with its doubting cacophony

Echoing my laments, why, oh why, couldn’t it be easy

I lived in it, I ran away and hid, in the forest just to be rid of it

I wrote pages and pages and pages about it

Until my throat turned raw and I saw blood in the ink

Ripping my soul out of my chest, I bathed my hands in it

Begging for answers while the gods and trees stayed silent

Round and round in circles, passing that rock for the hundredth time

Never getting closer, to the elusive truth I kept trying to find

In all these bones, I swear there’s an answer

While the scales tipped ever more out of my favour

The maiden grows convinced she’s the monster

Until she’s picking up her pieces, at the bottom of the ocean floor

Her reflections become ruminating over a problem never solved

As misery grew ever closer to gripping me in its jaws

You sent me an anchor, with the thread I swore, was only tied at this end

Thirty years later, the angel is still saved by the wise man

Your mouth at my temple, your arms, a harbour

You stopped the grief from pulling me under

One word after another, one foot after the other

 I followed the saltwater on the breeze

Writing about you, helped me find my feet