Where the Tide Carries Its Ghosts

The riptide wears my mother’s face.

You count the raindrops, name the storm,
but have you held the razor’s vein—
the shiver where the sky was torn,
or known the blood such edges contain?

You chart the tides, but not the hives beneath—
where childhood’s maze still grows:
walls thorned with what-ifs, corridors of if-onlys,
a ghost-sea where my shadow rows…

You speak of waves, yet never drowned
in the riptide of my silent screams,
where storms are lungs and ache is crowned
a queen without a crown, unseen.

Walk the labyrinth behind my sight—
each turn a wound, each step a trance.
Then tell me, if you’ve traced the night,
what name you’d give this endless dance.

For tides may ebb, and storms may break,
but only hands that hold the blade
can map the heart they’d dare to break—
the labyrinth I am—remade.

For till you’ve touched my undertow,
you’ll only chase the drift I make.

—T.A.

Inspired by Sigala’s “You Don’t Know Me.”

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