“Direct the intention seaward,” and “Asunder, sticking to the hurricane like glue.”

Direct the intention seaward, where kelp forests sway like cathedral tapestries,

And the hush of the deep folds inward, a silence vast enough to hold the ache of longing.

Let your thoughts unfurl like sea anemones, soft and trembling,

Reaching for the light that dances down in scattered gold.

The ocean does not ask for love, yet it receives it

With open arms of current and cavern, of salt and shadow, it gathers every gaze.

See how the stingray glides like a secret through the silt,

Unseen but sensed, like desire moving beneath the skin of the day.

A gull cries into the wind like a heart naming its hunger aloud,

And still the tide answers nothing…And still, we listen.

The barnacle clings without bitterness, the oyster dreams in nacre,

And even the smallest creature shimmers with the purpose of simply being seen.

Love is this: the swell and pull of something not yet named,

A force larger than language, like the moon’s hand dragging water across the world.

Consider the octopus, cloaked in color and cleverness,

An architect of solitude who still dares to reach, to touch, to vanish.

Is this not how we move through love?

Soft-bodied, luminous, changing form to survive the pressure.

To kiss someone is to let your anchor fall and trust the drift.

To love is to map a coastline with no intention of arrival.

Follow the jellyfish bloom that glows like a floating prayer,

And know that beauty does not need reason…Only time and water.

There are cathedrals made of corals, spires shaped by current,

And fish with faces like forgotten gods, blinking through the indigo.

Direct the intention seaward, and speak your longing to the foam,

For even if it vanishes, the echo will become part of the tide.

Love, like the ocean, is never only one thing.

It is predator and pearl, storm surge and stillness, devotion and danger.

So wade out into it, unbuttoned, undone, uncertain.

And let yourself be taken by something that does not end, but begins again.

Asunder, sticking to the hurricane like glue the rhapsody of the wind convalescing into shrieks that taper down into whispers, then up again, like a preacher with a busted mic—hallelujah in static, praise-be in feedback, amen slurred into the crack of a billboard folding, splitting, flapping like a guttural flag, like tongues of angels switching dialects mid-sentence, you hear it in Spanglish, in patois, in backwoods drawl and courtly sonnet form, you hear it drag rusted shopping carts down the block, you hear it recite Milton and misquote Biggie, you hear it tear shingles off rooftops like the pages of a holy book, half-sung, half-screamed, glory-be to the breath of the earth, cheap beer on a porch muttering reckonings, silk-suited CEOs howling from glass towers now open-air cathedrals, this is the octave of collapse, the bassline of thunder grooved into asphalt, you can almost dance to it, two-step in the puddles, sway with the debris, shuffle your sneakers to the rhythm of corrugated tin taking flight, and still the wind calls you by name in vowels too long to end, stretching your syllables into eternity, like mama shouting from the kitchen window, like prophets on corners with cardboard signs, like the hush that falls after a storm when every voice is swallowed into one breathless note, asunder, still sticking to the hurricane like glue.