When I learn to leave
by King Llanza
When I learn to leave
the fear in my body and mind, on the coast
where the horizon had been banished
from the sea’s promise that no mouths are left
unfed, will I still get to walk the edge of the tide line?
Footprints wash away behind me:
collected by the water, then forgotten.
And where the sky once was, wings of sparrows
call me by the name of the ink in my marrow.
In a gesture of farewell, I still wish to rise above.
Not as a husk collected by the waves, but as
a coconut seed settling on a random shore—thriving
after drifting through the world—as I walk the edge of it.
