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If I draw a tee-shirt for them, I'll get lawn tickets to see an orchestra. Or I could just go to the sea, on that day I'm rewarded for some artistic ability that I was sure I never had. I could go to the sea and I could stare at it. And stare at it.

And I could wait for it to purge up it's organs onto the sand or into the air. The kidneys, the humpback whales, the liver, the nasally barking seals, the intestines, the kelp rooted at the bottom. I could wait for it to abandon these things to the oxygen and I could run my fingerprints all over them.

I could write about the sea and the terrible pain in my chest when I'm too far from it. I could write more about sailors and jettys, the ones where Sarah and I sat and pricked our feet with barnacles.

The sea will never

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purse its lips and embrace me unless I run to it. Unless my feet kick up the sand behind me and spray it all over my back. Unless I toss myself oh-so-dangerously into the perilous being that once tried to drag me under with the dead bodies and the kelp, the intestines.

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I will write my love letters here, I will write my hate letters. The ones that start with, "I love you, but...", the ones that make our stomaches fall. And I'll just hope you're stronger than you show, because we think people are weaker than they are. So I'll hope you're stronger, and I'll hand you one of these letters, or I'll slip them through your door so I won't have to see your face when my words pulverize your heart.

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I will give this my all. My life is slipping through my fingers, lacking the blood to keep them warm enough to curl into fists. I need to leave the sea, it's the same everywhere. It's the same beating, oscillating being that's wrenched me from love so many times.

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The sea will never adore me. And the sea will never fall in love with me, it's tried to kill me before. So I will give this

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my all.