Driftwood
Driftwood knows
what it is to be broken slowly.
Not all at once.
Not by storm alone,
but by the patient teeth of tide,
by salt gathering in old wounds,
by being carried farther and farther
from where it first belonged.
Still, it survives.
Smoothed,
pale as bone,
it arrives on unfamiliar shores
without bitterness.
The sea has taken its name,
its roots,
its sharp edges,
yet somehow left behind
something holy.
I think there is grace in that.
To become softer
without becoming weak.
To let the waves remake you
without surrendering your shape entirely.
Driftwood does not fight the ocean anymore.
It learns the language of currents,
the hymn of surrender,
the quiet art
of floating after devastation.
And when the sun finds it at last,
half buried in warm sand,
gilded amber in the evening light,
it looks less like ruin
and more like something chosen
by the world to endure.