The Sea Knows It Is

the first thing you saw
wasn’t yourself.
it was the doorframe, the sun-split tree,
the curling smoke from your neighbor’s chimney —
a world already trembling, waiting
to be.

you didn’t know you were there,
not until the room pushed back,
not until the wind slid its cold fingers
under your skin.
there, at the edge,
in the clash of bone against brick,
you felt the faint pulse of an “I.”

to see is to draw a line.
this and that. yours and mine.
the bird outside your pane,
its feathers slick with rain,
is the thing you are not.
and because it is not you,
you become.

but what of the whole?
what of the great silent sea
that knows no boundary?
it dreams itself into waves,
lets itself break free,
into foam, into salt,
into a thousand separate mirrors.

each wave whispers,
“I am not the sea,”
and in that whisper,
the sea knows it is.

we carve the world into pieces
because in fragments we find releases
that teach us the shape of the whole.
to hold the other is to hold yourself —
palms open,
fingers touching only air,
yet grasping everything there.

this is no accident.
the splitting, the naming,
the distance inflaming
the ache between “I” and “not-I” —
it is the engine of knowing.
the room presses back.
the bird sings.
the sea swallows its waves
and waits
for the next to rise.

we are the sea, broken into waves,
each one rising, falling,
forgetting and recalling
the ocean we always were.
we shatter to become whole,
lose ourselves to find the soul
that cannot be known alone.