The Ocean Above Us
The sky rolls in waves of thunder,
Lightning creating peaks like dolphins
Leaping out to be pulled back in,
just to attempt to escape again.
I made up stories to explain them,
called them fake names, created my own Gods.
When my fears became long winded stories,
they weren’t fears, they were tales of glory
in the old forgotten ages. Even if
they were only ever my own creations.
I used to lay quietly, attempting to
imagine my past lives, as a hushed stories teller
comforting children, maintaining mythologies,
from the beginning of forever.
Getting pulled in by the high tide of telling lies,
resenting myself for its undertows and
bad habits I couldn’t let go of.
A storyteller has a resilient kind of soul,
taking fears and transforming them into
a soft reprieve or a cautionary tale.
The second ocean in the sky, as a child
caught my eye, and I saw myself
in every form
through its veil.
A conversation with my younger self
I don’t know if I’ll notice the colors of the flowers when you’re gone.
When your time is done, the richness of the petals— well it won’t matter.
See you notice the changing of the sky and will stare in awe at powerlines,
you’ve loved with your face and lied with your chest— I don’t know who I’ll be once you’ve
left.
The colors will be less bright, my feet less light, my heart holding less life—
eventually we all run out of time, and you have to die for me to have mine.
A fertilizer in the soil that someone better than us can grow from
a real attempt to do the right thing, to trust in someone who can do our fighting…
One who can set the path straight and right again… your eye is like my eye like their eye will be
A bland shade of blue and misshapen. Your cry is like my cry is what’ll make us finally happy,
the chance to really turn the light golden.
Yes you can’t see it, and neither will I, I’ll grow and I’ll change and be new, I too will die.
For this person, for whoever they are. The best I can do is leave their body unscarred, leave them
feeling well, let them breathe in fresh air— and hope that the best of us somehow makes it there.
Emerson Porter is a triple major studying English, Creative Writing, and Philosophy at Coe College. They’ve been writing for their entire life, and found a love for writing in all of its many forms.