An Ocean Inside Me

There is an ocean inside me,
vast and unnamed,
where storms brew without warning
and tides pull at my ribcage
like moon-drunk waters
against some forgotten shore.

I carry saltwater in my veins,
ancient brine that remembers
the first breath of creation,
when everything was fluid
and possibility moved
in currents deeper than memory.

Some mornings I wake
and feel the waves lapping
against the walls of my chest,
gentle as a lover's whisper,
and I know the sea is calm today—
my thoughts will drift like kelp,
swaying in the underwater silence
where schools of dreams
flash silver in the depths.

But other days the ocean rages,
whitecaps crashing against my sternum,
and I taste salt on my lips
though I have not cried.
The tempest churns inside me,
pulling up sediment from the bottom
of who I used to be—
fragments of conversations
never finished,
pieces of myself I thought
I had let go.

This ocean has no shoreline,
no boundary where water meets sand.
It stretches beyond the horizon
of my understanding,
into territories I have never mapped,
where creatures move in the darkness
that I cannot name
but recognize as my own.

Sometimes I dive deep,
holding my breath
until my lungs burn
with the weight of unspoken words.
I swim through canyons of silence,
past coral reefs of memory
where bright fish dart
between the bones of old loves,
old fears that have calcified
into something beautiful
and strange.

The pressure builds
as I descend,
and I wonder if I will surface
or if I will learn to breathe water,
to grow gills of acceptance
and make my home
in the blue-black depths
where light becomes
a distant rumor.

There are shipwrecks down there,
vessels I sent to the bottom
when their cargo became too heavy—
dreams that would not float,
hopes that took on water
faster than I could bail them out.
Now they rest on the ocean floor,
covered in the silt of years,
becoming reefs where new life
can take hold.

I have learned that this ocean
is not something to drain
or dam or redirect.
It is not a problem to solve
but a vastness to explore,
a mystery that lives
in the space between
my heartbeats,
in the pause before each breath.

The tides inside me
follow no earthly moon
but pulse to rhythms
older than my bones,
connected to forces
I feel but cannot see—
the pull of other oceans
in other bodies,
the gravitational dance
of all the water
we carry within ourselves.

When I place my palm
against my chest,
I can feel the waves
rolling beneath my skin,
and I know that somewhere
in the depths,
whales are singing
songs I have never heard
but somehow recognize
as my own voice
echoing back from the deep.

This ocean holds everything—
the debris of broken promises
floating on the surface,
the pressure of unshed tears
building in the trenches,
the phosphorescent glow
of moments when I felt
most alive,
most connected to the current
that runs through all things.

There are days when I stand
at the edge of myself
and watch the water
stretch to infinity,
blue becoming deeper blue
until it merges with the sky
of my imagination,
and I cannot tell
where I end
and the vastness begins.

I have tried to chart these waters,
to understand their depths
and moods,
but the ocean inside me
is ancient and unknowable,
changing with each season
of my becoming.

What I know is this:
I am more water than earth,
more movement than stillness,
and the ocean that lives
in the cavern of my chest
connects me to every drop
that has ever fallen,
every wave that has ever
kissed a distant shore.

When I am lonely,
I listen to the sound
of waves against my ribs,
and remember that I carry
an entire ecosystem
within myself—
currents that bring
nutrients from far-off places,
creatures that thrive
in the darkness,
tides that cleanse
and renew
and return.

This ocean inside me
is my inheritance,
my responsibility,
my home.
It is where I go
when the world becomes
too sharp,
too solid,
too insistent on edges.

Here, in the fluid space
between thought and feeling,
I am boundless,
I am depth,
I am the meeting place
of all the waters
that have ever called my name.

And when I finally learn
to stop fighting the current,
to let myself be carried
by the tide of my own becoming,
I discover that this ocean
inside me
is not separate from
the vast waters of the world
but part of one continuous sea
that connects every living thing
in its endless,
eternal
embrace.