Beyond the Edge of Reach

It was the hour when the sea wore its bruises,

Dark and rippled under a sky cracked with lightning.

And he stood, solitary, at the water's edge

Where the tide slipped in, whispering secrets

Like a sigh caught in a lover’s throat.

His gaze searched the yawning horizon

For a promise that never promised to hold him.

In the trembling silence of the restless waves,

Where the stars bled silver across the void,

He sketched out the shapes of vanished ships,

Lost in the deep like bones of giants.

The night wrapped around him like a memory—

But its hold was thin,

A presence without warmth.

Still, there was a spark beyond.

A glint, a ripple, a fading thread of light,

Hovering at the edges of his longing.

It called to him—

Not like a beacon of hope,

But a whisper trailing the fringes

Of his darkest fears.

And he moved.

Through the swell of unseen currents,

Through the pull of depths unknown and cold.

His hands, scarred and trembling, reached forward—

Each stroke an offering to the indifferent sea

That cradled him with cruel care.

He had traced this journey in his dreams,

Felt its ache etched into his heart.

Yet still, the light lingered.

Far off, the glimmer—

Always beyond the curve of his reach,

Dancing on the verge of surrender,

Drawing him with its fragile burn.

And he knew, as he swam through the heavy stillness,

That the light would never yield,

Nor he relent,

For they were bound in a quiet dance,

Locked in a tension that would never fade.

So he kept swimming,

A shadow beneath the shattered sky,

Eyes locked on the distant shimmer

That shone not for him,

But through him,

Both caught in the endless drift

Of a world that had forgotten dawn.