Midnight tide.

Shore. Midnight.

The ocean breathes like a beast–

not asleep, not awake,

just staring.

Wind scours my eyes raw,

tears crawl out,

craving the salt they never asked for.

But the air steals everything–

even the sound of you,

now just static that mimics

your voice too well.

Darkness folds the world in.

I smell the storm, but the sky hides it like a secret.

Your absence bent my horizon–

it ran.

I stepped back to find myself,

but the wave knew.

It rose

like a verdict.

Tall, hateful,

dripping silence.

each drop–a word you never said,

acidic,

devouring my skin and fabric

with pure intent.

But the view–

god, the view.

Too much like you.

Too beautiful

to run from.

Irreversible.

Like ruin.

Like faith.

I didn't pray,

just opened my arms.

You hesitated.

The wave.

Then broke–

not with fury,

but with indifference.

Water touched me like memory does.

Light, brief,

and leaving cold.

No scream, no gasp.

Only the shore

pulling everything back.

but me.

_________________________________________________________

The shore was never still.

The shore was a wound stitched with foam, constantly reopening. Midnight carved the sea into something unrecognisable. Black silk twisted by invisible hand, dragging itself endlessly towards me. I stood barefoot, swallowed by horizonless dark, the wind slicing through my chest like it wanted something buried beneath my ribs.

My eyes burned. Not from sorrow, but from the wind constantly stealing every tear before it could fall, drying them mid-birth. The tears fought back, begged to exist, to nourish something–grief, memory, hope–but the wind screamed too loud. It howled like your voice used to when we were young and not afraid to bleed.

I couldn't hear my thoughts. Only those loud, whispering echoes, pretending to be you. Each gust felt like a lie wrapped in your tone.

And then, I felt it–

a shift.

The weight in the air changed. Not the kind you see. The kind you feel with your spine. A storm was coming, I knew it with that primal certainty reserved for beasts and broken people. But there was no lightning, no warning. Just absence. Your absence. It was so vast, so final, it bent the sky backwards and dragged the horizon with it. The world had no end anymore. No edge, no promise.

I tried to step back–to flee whatever was rising–but the ocean was faster. A wave began to climb, not surge, climb. Like it had limbs, will. It loomed, swallowing the sky, dripping slow poison. Each drop that landed on me hissed, burning skin, unraveling cloth, peeling me back to something raw. A thing, not a person.

Still, I stayed

The wave was too beautiful.

It was you. Every inch of it.

Not in form–but in consequence.

It was what couldn't be undone.

I whispered "Don't spare me."

Not to plead, but to surrender.

Then, silence broke the air.

The wave paused.

Then fell apart,

not in violence–

in disinterest

It splashed at my feet like a forgotten sentence.

Not mercy.

Not rage.

Just dismissal.

And I stood there shivering,

not because I was cold,

but because I had been asked

to mean nothing

one last time.