Harbor

Watched a man bluefish near shore
and called him my friend

Not because I knew him deeply
but because loneliness sends strange signals across water
and sometimes another lonely thing answers

He drifted there beyond the tide line
half man—half sea
moving through the dark current
like a ship that had spent too many years
navigating storms alone

And I thought about love then

How women often stand at the shoreline
wanting arrival

Wanting something that docks fully
Something that lowers its anchor honestly
Something that says
here I am
I am no longer drifting

But some men love like the sea itself

They come close in waves
Retreat quietly
Return again under different weather

Not because they feel nothing

Because they feel too much
and fear what happens
when a heart finally reaches harbor

So they remain partly offshore
close enough to see the lanterns burning
close enough to hear tenderness calling from land
yet unwilling to surrender
their last route of escape

And women

women become lighthouse keepers in these loves

Faithful
Exhausted
Standing in terrible weather
trying to interpret distant signals correctly

Was that warmth?
Was that love?
Was that merely loneliness
passing briefly through the harbor again?

The fish-tail made sense to me then

Because some people belong partly to deep water

Partly to solitude
Partly to longing

They want intimacy
the way sailors want shore after months at sea

desperately
romantically
and with absolutely no idea
how to live there peacefully once they arrive

Still, there was gentleness in him

The tide carried him softly as though even the ocean understood
how exhausting it is
to spend a lifetime torn
between closeness and freedom

To be continued