MAR DE ARDORA
For those who have forgotten the shape of themselves
MAR DE ARDORA
I.
I woke underwater.
Submerged.
Not dead.
Not living.
Unraveling.
Sinking.
Memory twisting the blade.
Your voice found me again.
So did everything else:
how I carried you,
how I lost myself,
somewhere,
one day,
piece by piece.
Though I was never truly yours.
Though I never wanted to be.
Not anymore.
But guilt keeps drowning me.
Anger sharpens itself
under my nails.
Slowly.
Like countless mouths
feeding under my skin.
At some point,
even as I reached toward the surface,
I forgot the shape of myself.
The sky devoured the stars.
My soul swallowed the moon.
Even the faint glow of night
chose silence.
Chose not to witness
the way I wept.
II.
It was past midnight
when I felt
neon lights seeping
into my skin.
Bioluminescent waters.
An underwater sky.
Darkness,
finally coming alive.
What I thought was dead
had always been there,
waiting
to surface.
Mar de Ardora
gathers me.
Carries me.
Rewrites me.
Blue breaks.
The violence of color reminds me
I am still here.
Breathing.
At last.
Mar de Ardora,
feral miracle of salt,
awake
when everything sleeps.
Only the night and I
bear witness
to the moment
I stopped resisting the tide.
The scent of your hoodie.
Your morning voice.
The warm, bitter taste of your promises.
The water,
alive with fish,
returns to me
what I had lost.
I dance
through living blue.
And all that remains
is the woman who rebelled against herself.
The woman who survived her own haunting.
Mar de Ardora,
stitch my wounds with your foam.
Turn blood into salt.
Use your magic
to remake the heart I abandoned.
III.
Under the turquoise gaze of the moon,
at the mercy of movement,
of music,
of the tide,
the woman crossed
into the dark.
She let herself drift
through currents of stars,
through forests of light.
The sea gently opened
its hands.
And one by one,
the names,
the lips,
the ghosts,
were cast from her memory.
When she emerged,
the moon no longer recognized her.
Only water.
Only salt.
Only the beautiful violence
of becoming.
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Every quiet gesture helps.
I want to keep becoming. I feel like I drift back and forth.
I came out of this with salt in my mouth, honestly, like the drowning didn’t become gentle but it did become hers. I kind of adore how the haunting turns into something feral instead of clean, like healing showed up with wet hair and teeth.