The tired receding tide speaks of a maiden, not of flaxen hair but African ethnicity. They speak of a tender heart sitting on the beach sharing her water with the ocean, though the pendulums and clocks have worn out her thoughts do not gather dust. In the hallways of her being yesterday is as vivid, a time when time herself was young, a time when she loved.
She plucks pages from her heart like petals from a rose and tosses them onto the tide. "Let the oceans carry the weight of love, let the oceans carry him." She says.
"Should I miss him I can always find him in the returning tides." Yet she holds the stem dearly to remind her of the leaves she has parted with, the cicatrices she wears because they say,"we were young, we loved."
She watches them toss and sway on the tides, as they journey she prays to another shore far away where they will walk off a receding tide onto feet, feet that will embrace them and know them for what they are, feet that belong to him.