Broken Author

The sea does not care.
It never did.

A boy is lost to it.
A man returns from it.
A woman stands at the edge
and waits for something that won’t come.
The waves keep coming in.
They go out the same.

You can cry at the waterline.
You can throw rings of flowers,
ashes, prayers, teeth.
It won’t notice.
It won’t remember.

Ships go down.
Bodies sink.
Flags tear and disappear.
Names are spoken once,
then lost.
The sea doesn’t carry them.
It just moves.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.

People build near it.
Paint it.
Write about it.
They give it feelings.
They say it’s angry.
They say it mourns.
But the sea has no face.
No voice.
No need.

It was here before the stories.
Before the men with nets
and knives
and loud mouths.
Before the salt had purpose.
Before anything had a name.

It is not cruel.
It is not kind.
It is not lonely.
It simply is.

A father teaches his son to fish.
The son learns quickly.
He will teach his own someday.
Or maybe not.
The sea won’t notice.
It gives sometimes.
It takes when it wants.

Storms come.
Boats split.
Hulls crush like ribs.
A mother screams on the sand.
The gulls don’t stop circling.
The tide does not pause.

A sailor grows old beside it.
He watches it every morning.
He thinks it knows him.
But it doesn’t.
He will die,
and the sea will be the same
the next day.

We look at it
as if it should care.
As if it owes us
something more than salt
and distance.

But it owes nothing.
And we are nothing to it.

It will outlast the noise.
Outlast the cities.
Outlast the names carved into stone
and shouted into wind.

The sea will still be there,
rolling forward,
rolling back,
without pause,
without sorrow,
without joy.

Just water.
Just motion.
Just time
with no one to answer to.