…….Harbor Reflections:
………. Tides of Reclamation
Mourning Glories
It’s 4:42 AM
A litany of fog horns awakens the morning glories
The marine layer wraps the city in its quiet grip,
letting go only when the sun reclaims it by 8.
We forget its beauty
until we cross paths again
I sink into my bed like it’s a coffin,
my skin a map of wounds
no one ever quite figured out
Yet traced by hands that never understood
the terrain of my survival.
My body a map, still foreign to me.
I can still hear his Whispers;
or the notes left on the table.
The one I believed kept me strong.
I know he is free
in the water, a shipwrecked captain.
I hold onto the words he once meant
they linger like rusting containers
Though it is in the silence we shared
I’ve carried like a stowaway
heavy
still
waiting for something to change.
Anchored Heartlines
Time pools like oil on water,
iridescent and unforgiving.
These harbor boats understand migration —
how leaving is sometimes the most honest love.
Liquid memories begin to thaw
like sacred ink on silk waters
radiant and apprehensive
with each movement undefined
Here, where horizons bleed red
into forgotten languages of survival
I am a vessel — translucent
breaking each memory
A shipwreck of faith of unspoken resurrections
Roots sinking deeper than blood
Memory retaining a silent geography
where pain becomes my scenery
and landscapes become my shallow breath
The ocean-She is both wound and witness
Wrecked, yet courageous
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Eternal without boundaries
Her tidal pulse a revolutionary pslam
Though unforgiving like my ancestors,
who know nothing of mercy
but everything of transformation
My body: a map of uncharted ports
each scar an unseen veil
each breath a borderless country
where existence blooms in perverse whispers
and becoming is a ritual of endless undoing
Ships drift like prophetic shadows
carrying the weight of unspoken departures
leaving is the most honest love
leaving is the most sacred violence
And I, can be selfish
as oceans learn their own brutality
as roots learn to hold what cannot be held
as survival learns its own fierce poetry
Unforgiving. Unapologetic.
Just movement. Just breath.
Just the raw formation
Just the ocean breaking and rising again.
Seaborne Inheritance
A final farewell
A love letter
I will put with your ashes
poured into the waves, submerged in the water
Soon after, one by one
wrists bruised by shackles,
ankles scared from the anchors.
Set forward to meeting their maker
no more fear, no more sorrow
just their beauty and strength
They are free
The salt of each tear tastes not of my own
but for the women who fought
this battle long before me
for those who may struggle
for those who sink into despair
They gifted us intuition,
To stand at the ocean, shed tears right before them
and for the women who are ravaged
listen for the whispers,
for they fought for heavy hearts
just like mine,
just like yours
We are no longer a shipwreck.
-Rebekah La Fountain
