Adrift

I sat with them, the ones who fled,
whose silence was carved by salt and dusk,
whose eyes held jungles never named,
and spoke of boats
small paper skins with candles cupped
like hearts that dared to glow
on waters black with memory.

These lanterns, I told them, drift
not just on rivers, but between
what burns and what sinks.

The flame will eat the boat
unless the sea does first
but whether fire or flood,
the boat is gone.

The past dissolves regardless.

Yet they hold the edge of the boat
fingerbones tight with fear and duty.

Not ready to let go,
not ready to lose the ache
that told them who they were.

And I, the child of their ache,
wait in the hush after war
for a permission never spoken.

The question is not the death of the boat.
That’s certain.

But will they choose
to place it in the water,
to watch it drift beyond
the lantern's last breath,
the wound’s last word?
Or keep it locked on land, smoldering.

They say nothing.
Only sip tea grown in lands
they no longer claim.

Their silence folds time
like the hands that once built
the raft, the rope, the hidden path
to the night of departure.

If they let it go
if the boat drifts out,
flickering with the mercy of release
perhaps we too,
the tethered children,
might find a wind
not made of exile.

But until then,
we wear their stories like erosion,
uncertain whether we are drowning
or burning,
or both.

So I light my own lantern,
and wait for theirs to touch the tide.

And for the greatest of all goods
peace, breath, becoming
I ask them softly:
let it go.

Let the boat go.

Not because it deserves to vanish,
but because we deserve to live.