I Sea You.
- Nuna Ma’Khai
- Jun 5
- 3 min read
A spoken word poem on the suffering we keep.
The currents in your eyes look all too familiar
I can see the depth you hide behind the brown that boarders
the grief that rivers to your throat
That laugh —I know
is a cover you use
to cascade over the anger that lavas inside you
You hope it can comfort and conceal your desire
to hold captive what once touched you
in places this world would devour
The laugh that rumbles in your belly
and emerges out of your tongue
around your friends and loved ones is a liar
A puncture point painted and glossed in glitter
You’d never burden another soul with what anchors you
to the bottom of that sea I see in your flickers
It appears in your nightmares, doesn’t it?
The grief?
Does it voice its concerns through screaming and screeching
when you’re in a shower that spits boils on your skin?
Does it slap the face of those who get too close for comfort,
as if your heart is a bed
ready for them to lay undressed in?
I know what it’s like to be touched and left grieving
by caskets covered with notes and wishes
Words spilling from the mouths of those
with regret hooked in their hearts
Hands pleading for second chances
I hold the torments you keep chained away
in the chamber under your bed
They are nested in the scars of my womb
She remembers
She remembers feeling the choices her mother made
to be iron and steel yet still chooses to be open,
naked, carved in the marks that counted
the days daddy didn’t make it
She remembers the dry choking
of that phone dying for Daddy’s calls
His presence was strong with the scent of ghost garments
Abandonment lingered and left stains of disappointment
across floors that begged for his foot’s touch
even if it meant stomping until it split wide enough
to reveal the hell he left for his daughter to enter
on the days he chose legacy over love
I know you remember
I see the way your spirit limps and bends in your body
There were moments you secretly craved
for the heat of another heartbeat to dance against yours
To laugh and love without condition
Without the human condition of pushing and shoving
away healing that takes the shape
of a smile from a stranger who waves at you on days
you can just drag them with all the hate
you’ve picked up along the way
I know you crave closeness and openness
without the judgement that comes seeping through stares
from those who forget
that they too must wipe the gunk from their assess
after the old passes
Sometimes you feel orphaned in an ocean
too great to hold
You crave for it to soothe and
wipe the memories from your blush
Like Momma tried but couldn’t
Like that lover you gave your soul to
I know what it’s like to stack stone so high
that your own voice can’t climb its heights in search for you
We both have prayed for peace
only to shout and shoot in rejection
Afraid that it would consume what’s left
of the scattered pieces spared
from a void filled with sledges and hammers
Tell me,
how is that working for you?
To crave everything you give and still choose to reject it
as if it must come packaged in plastic
Incubating in a box with your name on it
As if it must arrive the same day and hour
We have loved and lost
but what we lost was never ours
What was ours was the experience
The love we gave was not ours
We are the love that gave ourselves willingly
So, why do we choose to suffer for it
when we can be it again?
And again
and again?
When it can lead us to our healing?
When it can lead us home to ourselves?
The ocean never asked for you to hold it
The sea is satisfied without your needing
They only ever mirrored
your capacity
to love.
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