“Daddy?”
He looked up from his paperback.
“Why do they come back” I asked.
“Why does who come back, princess?”
“The waves. They get pulled away, but they always come back. Why don’t they just stay in the ocean?”
He set down his novel in the sand
And pulled me on his lap before he answered.
“ Because the waves and the sand belong together.
And no matter the force,
No matter how hard it is and no matter
How many times they get pulled away,
The
water always finds its way back, somehow.”
And then I asked the question
That defined my entire existence, at the age of seven.
“Is that what love is?”
I never got an answer,
Just a drop of salt water
Dripping down my father’s cheek.
Which, being innocent and trusting,
I believed, when he told me,
Was a drop from the ocean.
