CONSANGUINITY

We return to the water as if it remembers us

a reliquary

bearing the salt of our blood

our tears

our skin.

A connection the body knew

before language.

An atavistic pull toward a womb,

not metaphor but origin.

We enter and are buoyed

held in continuity

older than memory

where what is external

has always lived,

within.

At the surface

reflection becomes recognition.

We are not separate.

We are resurfaces

of the same tide.

Yet the horizon refuses purity.

Vessels cut across

slow,

certain,

a parallel truth

transposing the same body.

Industry and intimacy

entangled,

not opposing,

boundin quiet kinship

in consequence.

The sea

corridor and sanctuary.

Extraction entwined with immersion.

What sustains is also taken.

Lacuna

a divide we cannot diminish,

only inhabit.

Lunation

marks the passage

of reverence and profanation,

a rhythm,

participated in

whether we name it or not.

The undertow constant.

Diachronic,

erosion without spectacle.

Still, we return.

Still, we depend.

Between rebirth

and undoing,

we remain.

Tethered

to a shared salinity,

an ancestral exchange of survival.

We cannot leave this water.

We cannot leave it unchanged.