Ophelia

He touches my face, brushes my hair back behind my ear

and I feel that I have seen this event before, in storybooks or films.

Even several years after the scissors, I am still surprised when I notice

that my dreadlocks are gone. I look into his face expecting to smile at him,

but a grimace crosses over his cheek and pulls at a tendon in his neck.

"I don't love you. I don't think I ever can.

Um, I think you're amazing and all, best girl I ever met, really,

but I don't think we have a future together. Trust me, it's not you."

I almost cry, but am calmed momentarily by counting the cliches.

We are standing near the water and just as I am about to speak

he runs for the shoreline and suddenly his ears are under the canopy;

I see his legs kicking frantically like a dolphin's fins, or maybe

this is an illusion-

the faint flashing may be the moon kissing the newest of her children.

I have seen truth only twice, once tonight as he ran

and once the day I met him and he described his life-

"Each time I dive it is silent. Sensations are slowed and beautiful

and impossible. Water surrounds you and even if someone swims beside,

when beneath the surface you are always alone; a letter sealed with wax."

After I heard this, I thought his sentiment was rather self-indulgent.

Here he was, shirtless, a tour guide for rich Americans from the mainland:

not much resembling a man who would drown in search of a pearl.

But then, why scavenge for treasures if solitude is beauty?

What was written long ago?

That Men fight because there is a thing they wish to steal or defend,

and that Men flee because there is a thing they are forced to fear?

I could not be the lover that the ocean is for him, though I tried.

Oh, his face when the water is warm and he thinks I am not watching...

How to make sense of all this?

He does not love me, so he flees as though he is pursued

by an enraged mob carrying sledgehammers?

Does he imagine, if he had stayed by my side, that I would scream hatreds

For the entire empty night to hear, embarrassing the gulls and jellyfish?

Or make the first violent action of my life because I have been scorned?

He is swimming quietly. The surf swallows sound and misery

and I know he is too far departed to hear anything except the constant waves.

He did not plan this; his eyes find the moon, his arms seek it.

What creature damaged him so terribly, that he would prefer

the cycles of eternally barren rock to the changing hope of a woman?

God damn, my chest feels heavy.

I walk toward a place where waves are lapping crescents into the beach.

I take a minute to glance nearly everywhere in the heavens,

then down at a mass of foundered seaweed held motionless by driftwood.

Overhead, a satellite pretends to be a series of novas as it orbits.

If he wished, he could circle the world before I see him again.

I had not been making demands upon his life.

I wanted him. I was not unreasonable...

This is all wrong, terribly wrong! Why would he say such things?

It may be that I am not looking at my situation in an appropriate manner,

but I simply cannot understand why he would lie about his love for me!

Suddenly I understand everything.

Far off at sea, toward the deep where superstitions flourish,

where the ocean is blank and false unless fish jump, for no apparent reason

the Earthshaker screams at the earth until it is forced to roar in return.

This rage of the god that drew the second lot is sometimes overlooked,

for it only destroys the works and homes of those living perilously close

to untamed chaos: as in all societies, the penalty for boldness is death.

After the wreckage of the tsunami is cleared, everything is the same as before.

The moon is a woman but her word can be trusted.

The waves are executioners but refuse to sit in judgment.

The ocean can never leave you.