Grace where waves meet shore.

Decades of despair,
decades fighting, thrashing,
for air.
I didn't know someone could drown so slow,
nor how long-lasting the storm.

Sure there have been victories,
some solid wins,
but they always seemed to be
baits of catastrophe,
points of demarcation that announced
another fall comes near.

I did what anyone would do,
I quit,
I released the tremendous tension
that had built up over decades of strain.
I stopped fighting, I stopped longing,
I stopped all petty attempts to overcome
the strength and magnitude of the storm.

and just as the water was going to enter my lungs,
just as I was ready to let it win.
I'd catch sight of someone else who had also been flung.
Even here, I could hear and feel their pain.
Confused, distressed, flailing, fighting,
it was their first time in the water.
With my decades in the depths,
I figured I could offer some help.

I'm not sure if I've made a change,
I'm not even certain that I've done more good than harm,
I thought by letting go I'd float,
but after years of renunciation,
its only left me with even less to show.

I don't fight for the surface anymore,
that's where the waves are,
and every fucking time I make it up there to glimpse the light,
to breathe the air,
larger, stronger, more voracious waves than ever before,
rain down, crash, and rape my every pore.

Its been so long,
so long lost,
fighting the sea,
that I can't even remember from when I came.
Where are these others,
those whom I find thrown to the depths,
from where have they came?

I don't bother to ask, there isn't enough time,
Just enough time to orient them,
to fill them with air,
to point toward waves above,
and before I know it,
there they go.