may the third

my gentle rocking wave,

how can anyone measure longing? is there a tool that i have not found yet to determine the weight of this lump dredged deep in my throat that seems to awaken like the kraken whenever the sea mists paint your name across the deck of this god damn ship? is there any way i can put into words how this gunpowder stinks like death and how i only wish to bathe in the scent of your skin on mine once more? how can i begin to explain anything at all? i have seen hell alight these past few days, my sleeping is something to be wanted, i am growing older far faster than the lord has perhaps intended. and yet i stay clean shaven and stand up straight just in case the tides recede far enough to bring me back to you. i have written you every day and every word comes out wrong, so i throw my crumpled chunks of heartstrings into the sea, away to drift aimless like i aim to be. i am so scared in every way imaginable.
my father once told me that the only way to truly escape anything, whether it be war or the devil or the creeping blackness that hides within everyone, is to stay inside the sea and let it swallow your soul up. he said that if the ocean ever calls you home, then you can never truly be lost. there is holy water somewhere here and i will wash myself clean of everything that ever made you cry and everything that will ever break your heart. my absense is the last gift i can afford to give, please rebuild your walls higher so they can never be torn asunder again. pray for hails of gunfire to bring me to heaven. pray for sinking ships and whiskey whales to swallow me up, gobble down this tired body and leave me to wallow inside the hollows of the world. every night i bend over, creaking bones and all, and ask god only to take you deeper into his bosom and to hold you the way that i used to, only with a little more love.
i know that i am not brilliant, i know that your mother raised you well and taught you better than to get tangled up in spiderwebs like mine. love is a tricky scab that we cant help but pick and pick because we want proof that it is still there, still pulsing, still bleeding the same color as it did far too long ago. it seems that i have scratched myself to the bones searching for colors that were there all along. i know that i have failed you and i know that you have kept your quiet with the amity of statuesqe perfection, my cactus fingers cutting you open and you only loved me for it. i suppose that if you were in my shoes, dressed up in some naval outfit that fits too snug for my liking, then you would have already been awarded a medal for bravery in the face of absolute danger. they said, when we first set sail, that war is hell. i have since found that war is heaven and that love is hell, because war is an endless hallways of fire escapes and shoots and ladders, daggered across the pacific skyline blood red with loss and with the appeal of dignity still lingering just over the dying like of yesterday.
i love you the way i love the sea: i only wish to drown inside of you so that you could better see all of me. keep close to your brother and please reassure the children that i am fighting. between you and i, i dont know how long i can last at this, my scalp can only taste death once and i do not want to die nameless and broken. im so sorry that i left you in the dark so long, im so sorry that i do not have your affluence to tell you all the things you need to know. im so sorry that i ran away to fight demons that have been growing inside me like a child. i will return to you with halos hanging sturdy above my skull, demons excised, arms open to entangle you in all the love you are forever indebted to. please pray for me and i promise that i will unravel like a story soaked into the sea, finally broken apart, finally set free. there are doves somewhere nestled inside of this cracked ribcage and i will not return to you until they soar. you were always my favorite dream and i let you slip through my fingers, sands of time eroding all the towers i built barehanded and blind. i am a coward, this i know, leaving you to tend our young like a lonely shepard left to the wolves, but i have seen your swords shine and i have seen the way your eyes turn to coal when they need to smolder everlasting lessons into the tender skin of youth. you will make them better alone than i would have corrupted them with cowardice and fringed morality.
i love you, i love you, i love you, i never lied about that, i never blathered untrue, i never faltered with feeling. i only wanted to feel all there was to feel. send my spring angel and my summer son all the love you have to spare, tell them that i am being brave. i cannot bare to stand the thought of them looking at me through disappointed eyes. tell them i am fighting for them, tell them my guns blaze endlessly, saving the world, sailing the ocean, their floating father has yet to be harrowed in battle. yet i can feel the knuckles of death rapping on my locked cellar doors, waiting with patience for me to gather the strength to let him in. the sea will save me somehow. i will save you, i will save me, i will save sanctity or i will die trying.

i love you, to the edges of the world and back again, no matter what the black clouds may spell out.

-W.

Father,

I sometimes find myself wondering where about in this big blue world they have settled you into. The nightmares about bullets finding their way into your heart have finally slowed, Mother tells me that I need maybe not stay out in the sun so long. She says it turns to poison if we let it sit long enough on our skin. Sometimes I fear that she will begin to miss you too much and go absolutely mad, tossing up her hands the way she does. Surely you know.
The days are quiet, now, without you. Although I expect that you know nothing of silence anymore, what with all the men and fighting and things that we hear on the radio after Mother goes to bed. Mr. Truman says that it will all be alright in due time, that nothing can stop us. I certainly hope that nothing can stop you. Rome has fallen once more, Father, and it is not necessarily up to you to try and repave the streets with gold. Should you try and carry the world, they will only become paved with blood. I miss you, everyone is gone sometimes, school is terribly dull. I find myself more concerning with caricatures of Mr. Dawson’s stoutness than trying to understand the importance of trigonometric sequences of gaudy numbers.
You will be missing my birthday. It is a travesty, a girl only turns sixteen once in her life and her father is supposed to welcome her to womanhood. At times I wonder if you will ever dance with me again, I have been working on my waltzes. That is what I will try to dream about instead of all the dark things. There ought to be sunshine in one’s mind. The devil can find himself inside the smallest cracks in one’s heart.
I wonder how long it will take for these letters we are writing to reach you. I wonder if you are writing back to us, we are waiting impatiently, anxiously, for word of your safety. You are in your children’s prayers nightly, I hear him talking to God through the walls. He is more scared than I am. The sea will try to take you, if you let it, do not let that ship become your home. We all bid you adieu and waved our white-flagged handkerchiefs across the Smithson dock when you sailed East, and we are all desperately waiting for the dock to bring you home. I hope you are sleeping again. I know that you weren’t for months before you left. I know that you want to be a hero and save someone’s life, but you should know that there are lives here that need your strong hands too.

”The sea was the house and the world was the nave
You were the sea and you were the nave

The nave was stormy, the sea was calm
While the house was waiting for the world

To come in by the navy of the sea
The sea was a nave, the world was a house”


Yours in love and prayers, rejoicing for your safety,

-A.

april 12th

to my soldier,

there are a lot of things that you need to hear and that you need to know, but they are also things that are only meant for ears older than yours. you will grow up quicker than your mother and i ever imagined and maybe then you won’t be so mad at me for leaving. i can still feel your little fists beating my thighs, as i hope you can still feel my arms around your neck, clinging tightly.
there is a war on, son, and i have been called away to try and make things right again. the world needs your papa, and i will fight tooth and nail to make sure nothing bad will ever happen to you. i do not know when i will be able to come back home, i do not know much these days; i only know that you are my beaming light and that i do not doubt for a moment that you will outglow the sun. you are now the man of the house, and you have duties, you have responsibilities. make me proud.
i am currently stationed somewhere out at sea, i think it is in the pacific because the wind blows west every morning and blows me down every night. the waves fight harder than the mortars do. water will always destroy more than fire, remember that.
and remember this: your mother is infinitely right in anything she tells you, and you ought to listen to every word she tells you. your sister is a dreamer and that means that she understands the world a lot better than i ever did. she sees things the way that they should be seen. keep close to her, do not let words or stones tear you two apart- your relationship is the only one in your whole, expanding life that will never fall beyond repair. love her intently and listen with unclasped ears, she is a dreamer after all.
i will write to you as often as i can, though sometimes the sea swallows these letters whole. she is a hungry beast untamed by the likes of me. i am alive as long as you believe me to be. you are nothing more than my pride and joy and one day you will understand the swells i am suffering to keep the storms from ever reaching you.

chin up, my soldier, your father will come as quickly as he can. mind your mother and offer to help with the yardwork, summer is coming and you know how quickly the jungle grows outside if we do not hammer it away.

you are my first thought always,

W.