Instructions for the Sea

The sea keeps nothing: it gives everything back at the wrong hour, the driftwood, the shoe, the promise.

You hand it a letter and it brings it back to you with no envelope, no sender, turned into a salt that burns on the lips.

That was how I wanted to forget you: throwing you into the water the way you throw a stone to measure its depth.

But the sea keeps nothing. Every morning you break on the shore, intact, stubborn, with seaweed in your hair and that way you have of shining when you should not any more.

So I have learned not to ask for oblivion from what only knows how to give back.