Shipwreck

To camp is to come and leave.

To prepare, to count the days,

to believe in return.

To hold inside you the promise of departure.

To sleep knowing the world holds firm outside your walls.

A safe adventure.

But I could never,

not after her.

I prefer shipwreck.

I prefer the chaos we choose over the order we inherit.

Not the kind given as punishment,

not the accident,

not the storm.

No—mine is a shipwreck of will.

A decision made in silence.

What need have I for sustenance?

What is hunger, now?

I could survive on her gaze alone.

And die just as easily from its absence.

There is no horizon for me to watch.

No rescue worth wanting.

I do not want saving.

The shore calls,

it always calls—

with its safety, its salvation, its dry and quiet hope.

I turn away.

I go deeper.

Let me vanish there.

Let me sink.

Let me be lost,

or worse—let me be found exactly where I meant to disappear.

I do not count the days.

I do not wait for tomorrow.

There is only the wreck.

The wreck, and the quiet.

I do not have everything.

But everything has her.