Love and Surfing

Sunrise and sunset.    
I hurt myself over and over.    
Get back on the board and ride.    
I hate my own bitter heart.    
I detest my wounded pride.    
So I repeat the murder of my inner surfer.    
Shoot her in the head.    
She never fully dies.    
Instead she kills me slowly with romantic cyanide.    
Pulling pieces of me out with the high tide.  
I am reanimated and brought back to life upon the foam.  
To ride once again, so on the beach I roam.  
   
Waves crashing are like lovers meeting.    
Bringing seaweed to the surface.    
Oh the things you’ll see when you’re surfing  
They can make you nervous.  
The creatures beneath.    
A shadow of something big swimming  
The strange things you step in if your feet hit the bottom    
The undertow, how it can pull you down.  
Pushing, pulling. Almost making you drown.    
You can feel the most like you're living when you are close to dying.    
Those harsh waves can make you repent, make you regret ever surfing.  
Yet you do it again. And again.    
   
Always thought love was like skydiving.    
The weightlessness of falling.    
But maybe it’s more like surfing.    
Never knowing if you can stand up.    
If you can make it to safety.  
If you will fall, bleed or beg for mercy.  
If that wave is the fate you seek.  
Or if it is slow and weak.    
If a shark will take a bite.  
So much of your success depends on if the weather is right.    
Hoping you don't get an infection  
From some nasty coral you ran into on your last session  
Trying to find the right balance.  
Can this wave last?  
Never knowing if you have the strength or courage to work with the ocean.  
If you can flow with that waves motion.  
That movement you have no control over.    
The earth and moon moving water towards you.
Then pulling it away.    
Can we make it over the break?  
The sun is setting.    
No paddling back.    
Into the dark we were surfing.    
   
Sometimes you catch a beautiful wave.  
A perfect curl, the right angle, everything you crave.    
One that makes you not care about all the crappy tides.  
All the times you almost died.  
Sometimes you hit a weird one and you have to bail.  
One you know can only fail.    
Am I too weird to ride through?    
I wonder what kind of wave I am to you.    
A burner, a gem, a bad crash, a general tour.    
An easy one like a setup or the kind you've never seen before?    
To me you’re not a wave but the entire sea.    
Yes, you are like the whole ocean baby.    
Vast. Mostly unknown.    
Deep and magical.  
Full of lost societies and mythology.  
I’ll never know your secrets.  
Or your lies.  
So all I can do is move towards the horizon.    
Foolishly surfing further out, reaching for the setting sun.    
   
8/7-8/8-23