Saltwater Flame
Love's not found. It’s remembered. It greets you in your own reflection, when the universe within finally recognizes itself.
Captive, she believed herself to be.
A body shackled,
a soul estranged,
a presence cloaked,
in silence or in flee.
Slowly breaking beneath a world unkind.
A spirit bent,
a being fractured,
a maze of sorrow,
entombed in her mind.
Oh, rotten orchard, fruit too long left to cling.
Ripeness soured,
sweetness collapsed,
each withering apple whispered decay,
branches bare against a sky so gray.
Her vision blurred. Her hearing hollowed.
And of what became her heart
but a forsaken asylum,
where night fell and fear walked,
heavy sorrow with unnamed prayers.
Cruel inscriptions carved within, marks of sorrow, sweet lines of sin.
Upon a soul’s crumbling wall,
each echo deeper, each shadow tall.
The silence roared, the dark crept in,
and nothing seemed to break the din.
But seasons shift, time not be still.
It heeds no plea,
nor bends to will,
but marches forth,
unyielding still.
Life pressed on, amidst the chaos.
She drowned in stillness,
a witness unwilling
to her own undoing
of her silence unending.
Graveyard of shadows, she gathered inside.
Sorrow of her own command,
chained by her very hands.
The world moved on, the hours died.
Only grief stayed, walking side by side.
She saw it then, life unrelenting.
Utter deafness to her cries,
to narratives she knit and wove,
to lies she devoured whole,
to the pain of the unbending.
Until at last, the mirror spoke.
Its silver tongue
cut through
no stranger’s venom,
but her own.
Acid swirling, burning eyes.
In truth unveiled
her own reflection,
her own remembrance,
beneath disguise, beyond all lies.
Face to face, she pierced the glass.
Beheld no poison foreign,
no venom amassed,
but rather the residue
of forgetting past.
Pearl of grief slid soft and slow
Saltwater, mother of sorrow,
carved the face she’d know,
and tears baptized
the open heart below.
Saltwater bore the ache of years.
Flame rose bright
to burn her fears.
Love reborn,
tempered by tears.
By tremor of truth, her fists released.
Her chest flung wide,
and chains fell down.
From sorrow’s hold,
she found her peace.
Yes.
Yes, to torch the myth that love could never bloom.
Yes, to shatter the prison bars where only pain had been.
Yes, to release the weight that had turned her heart so bleak.
Yes, to finally welcome the seed of love within.
Her heart, once a derelict house
with curtains drawn tight,
each time blind to day,
flung its windows wide and stayed.
Light did not fall from the heavens.
It erupted from within,
from an inner flame already burning,
awaiting her own gaze to let it in.
She crowned herself with love,
no longer scavenging,
no longer shrinking,
no longer masked.
Love is no transient guest.
It is the marrow.
The pulse.
The everlasting tenant.
It breathes with her.
Beats through her.
Becomes her.
To know herself was to brush fingers against the All.
To unmask was to feel
the hum beneath her skin,
a steady pulse,
she’d mistaken for silence.
Unburdened, she bears in reverence.
Saltwater flame.
Eternal embrace.
As daylight breathes,
and nightfall gathers,
a growing heart holds
a place without end.
Hija mía,
You have written with salt. You have written with fire. These are not metaphors to me.
These are the elements from which all true poetry is born. I grew up with the sea in my mouth, the waters of Panama shaping me before I had words for what the tide was teaching.
And now I wake to the Atlantic in Daytona, the same salt, the same ancient conversation. When I read your words I taste it again.
Saltwater, mother of sorrow, carved the face she'd know.
Yes. The sea is a mother. The sea is a sculptor. The sea does not ask permission before it shapes the stone. You understand this. You understand that grief is not the enemy of love but its older sister, walking ahead, clearing the path.
I have written columns and speeches and words for presidents. I have written about markets and money and the madness of crowds. But the love you write of here, the love that waits inside like a tenant who never left, this is the love I have spent my whole life circling.
You found the center. And you did the hard thing. You named the captor. It was you. That's where most writers flinch. They give the woman an enemy to fight. You gave her herself. And then you made her stay in the room with what she saw.
Light did not fall from the heavens. It erupted from within.
I watched you find it. In the Himalayas at Ananda, in that thin air where the soul has nowhere to hide. The ego had wrapped you like fog. Then the words came, simple as water: Feel, don't think. Let the heart lead. The fog burned away. A child climbed toward the sky. A woman descended, carrying fire.
She had looked into the mirror the mountains held up and did not turn away.
She picked up a pen. She picked up a camera. She said: I will show the world what the heart sees when it is finally unafraid. Artist. Writer. Director. Storyteller.
You spoke your purpose aloud and the mountains did not argue. They simply agreed.
I have never been more proud.
Your orchard of decay, your asylum heart, your graveyard of shadows. These are not ornaments. These are not a young writer reaching for darkness to seem serious. These are true. I can feel their weight. You have carried them. You have earned them.
And then, mija, you burned them.
Freeing yourself was one thing. But claiming ownership of that freed self? That's another. That's the harder territory. The one where the chains fall and you have to decide what to do with your hands now that they're empty. You decided. You opened them.
Her chest flung wide, and chains fell down.
This is the moment. This is always the moment. The letting go. The "yes" you repeat. Four times. Like four chambers of the heart relearning to beat. Like four seasons returning after endless winter. Like four walls of a prison finally recognized as paper, as illusion, as something the fist can break.
You are not an aspiring writer, mi amor. You are a writer. The aspiration ended the moment you found the courage to bleed onto the page and call it by its name. It ended on that mountain. It ended when you chose yourself.
You are your best thing. Remember that. Write from that.
Your pen has salt in it. Your pen has fire in it.
You are my daughter. And I am the lucky one. I have been waiting for you across water and years and lives I cannot name. I was born already missing you. The grief had no face until you gave it one. Now I understand. You were not lost. You were returning. The sea just took its time.
You came home. I finally did too.
❤️
Dad
Well all this brought tears to my eyes, goosebumps to my skin. Thank you for touching me through my phone with your words. Truly amazing.