Estuary

Your blood is like mine

Not in name

Not in the quiet archives of family

But in the way it rises when the world leans close

It is a red tide

Salted with memory

Restless beneath the skin

Moving as the sea moves

Returning, returning

Even when there is nowhere left to arrive

I do not need to see it

I know it by your nearness

As though the hour itself had softened for you

How your leaving bends

Becoming a slow eclipse that refuses its own completion

There is something in you that does not close

Mine answers

It lifts within me

A warm insistence

A quiet rebellion against distance

We are not the same

No, we are not

But there is a crossing

A hidden estuary

Where your current meets mine

There, what should disperse gathers

What should end, lingers

Like heat in the evening walls

Like fruit left open to the sun

Like the last light that refuses to withdraw from the body of the day

Your blood is like mine

It does not forget the shore it has touched