THE CLOUDS IN OUR EYES
~ Lisa Ann Reilich
I sit by the Sea so she can cry for me.
Her mist-laden fingers caress the parched
corners of my eyes — plying — softening these
outer edges of my frozen stubborn shores, her
homecoming sticky with salt, sticky —
like late-night Midway cotton-candy fingers
— and just as sweet, pervasive, persistent —
sweet/salty stickiness doing for me what I
cannot
do
for myself.
Her incoming clouds, resting, reflect —
— refract in pools now swimming, now
gathering, now spilling, softness blurring,
warming my cool — now flushed — cheeks,
loosening, thawing, melting my intractable
scarred depths through which I bear witness
to this, oh, so heavy — so deeply, deeply loved
Mother of a World.
I come to the Sea so she might cry for me.
I sit with the Sea, and she cries with me.
I rest by the Sea — I hold (let go) and —
I’m held.
From Lisa’s second poetry collection THE CLOUDS IN OUR EYES, 2025.
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