by Patti Taylor
We set out
under a clear horizon.
I believed
we were travelling
towards the same shore.
I loved you.
That much
was true.
There were currents
I could not feel.
Small absences.
Unanswered questions.
I blamed myself
for the distance,
and called it weather.
I trusted the chart
because I trusted you.
I believed
marriage
was a map
we had drawn together.
I never imagined
that part of the coastline
had been hidden from me.
The truth arrived
like fog
rolling in from the sea.
Quietly.
Relentlessly.
Until the familiar world
became strange,
and nothing
could be seen
in the same light.
I had been happy.
No one
can take that from me.
The happiness
was real.
It was the marriage
I misunderstood.
I understood then
that I had loved
a real man,
and also
the man
I believed him to be.
I mourned them both.
I discovered
that love
can be genuine,
and still be built
upon
what is never spoken.
That knowledge
has its own tide.
I asked for truth.
I asked again.
I waited
for acknowledgement,
for sorrow,
for the recognition
that a vessel
had struck
hidden rocks.
The sea
gave no answer.
The sea changed colour.
The house remained.
The years remained.
Yet everything
beneath them
had shifted.
We remained
within the same house,
like two ships
anchored
in one harbour,
their ropes untied,
their voyages
already separate.
Some storms
are not made
of wind.
They gather
beyond sight,
in secret waters,
until one day
they arrive,
already fully formed.
The years after
were grey years.
Not storm.
Not calm.
A long weather
without a name.
A sea
without landfall.
I grieved
not only
for what was lost,
but for the life
I thought
we had shared.
Both griefs
sailed
the same water.
The sea
keeps its own counsel.
It carries
truth
and illusion,
love
and disappointment,
memory
and regret,
upon the same tide,
without judgement.
I cannot return
to the shore
from which
I sailed.
It exists now
only
on old charts.
I fold them
carefully,
and set
a different course.
The horizon remains.
Grey sea.
Grey sky.
I no longer mistake
clear weather
for safe passage.