Love the Lying Sailor

Love the Lying Sailor

Gazing out off the bow

I dropped a line into the water.

A good thing about the ocean:

no one can hear you with the sea there to swallow your words.

The secret sank even faster than the ring she threw overboard –

It was following the ring,

chasing the diamond bait as if the line could snatch it up again and take back all the lies

but this line couldn't fix anything,

only bury that diamond deeper in the ocean.

I never knew why I gave it to her

I knew I didn't love her,

just her sandy hair and ocean eyes.

They pulled me in with the tide and our romance was a moonlit lie.

She never knew though

not until last night.

The diamond gave it away

with an unasked and unanswered question, "why?"

she somehow saw, in my lying sailor's eyes, the untruth of those words "I love you"

and the diamond flew and glittered and sank

and I knew it was over

I never would have kept her anyway

She was land and I am all at sea

She couldn't keep hold of me

and the land can't hold me either.

I wanted a diamond, I guess,

Beautiful and precious and fascinating,

to hold on to, one that wouldn't weigh me down.

So I gave it to her, the only diamond girl I knew.

But sailors like me can't give diamonds away, and we can't keep them either.

I was only lying,

lying with salt-soaked hands on the small of her back

and sea-breeze whispers close in her ear.

I remember how her eyes swirled like an ocean storm,

like the sky for once and not the sea.

I am convinced I didn't love her

or how else could she have known?

Diamonds glitter so, leave you dazzled and unsure.

I threw her back to be a diamond fish.

Follow me all to sea, but I will never follow you. The sea should be enough for me.

Diamonds are too much to care for, and too much to keep

Too much to love

and the secret line I threw into the blue depths was this:

"I wish I had."