This poem is dedicated to all my dear friends who are graduating in a few weeks. I will miss you, but I know each of you will shape the world with your brilliance. I’m so grateful for every memory we made together.
Summer comes like a hurricane— sudden and devastating and inevitable I shouldn’t be surprised For the past eight months, I’ve been preparing for the storm, steeling my heart for the impact I have no choice but to bear But nothing can prepare you for the first wave as it creeps forward on the distant horizon, taunting you with the childish hope that it will spare you if you don’t stare it in the eye until it rushes onto your shore like an invading army until it crashes into your home like an uninvited guest until it swallows every lovely thing you’ve ever known in a single terrible bite Yesterday, we were dancing on the beach in the sweet evening breeze, too spellbound by the sunset to fear the rising sea wrapped in the blissful illusion of forever that comes when two souls find joy in each other’s company Now I stand alone on the barren shore in a graveyard of ruined telephone wires slumping like fallen crosses over tombs of absence I dig through displaced sand on hands and knees searching for monuments to the love that once grew here, some piece of you the tide couldn’t steal from me I find a scrap of cloth, a tarnished chain, a single pearl earring and squeeze them between my shaking fingers like a rosary, praying that faith and love alone could return the priceless treasures I lost at sea But you are not lost You are not clinging to a scrap of driftwood in the fathomless deep Your vessel travels through foreign waters, but you stand proud at the prow, commanding your ship through a brave new voyage sailing through distant seas with bright eyes and a hopeful heart touching the farthest corners of the earth with your brilliant beauty So I find solace in the night sky because we are all charting our paths under the same stars May your mast hold firm May your compass point true And perhaps when we have both journeyed long enough, the sea that now divides us will carry us till we meet again For now, I build anew this island we both loved and from the debris, I craft my own ship