Where the Ocean Kissed Me

I did not mean to fall in love with the moment,
but it held me
like it had been waiting for my arrival
since the first tide ever touched the moon.

There—
ankles in salted prayer,
wind tracing my collarbone like a secret,
I met myself.

And then you.

You—
with eyes full of shipwrecked poems,
and a mouth that tasted like a thousand tomorrows
folded into one aching now.

You didn’t ask for my fear.
You didn’t demand I be smaller.
You only leaned in—
and gave the world back to me
in the shape of your kiss.

A kiss that wasn’t hurried.
Wasn’t trying to become a destination.
It simply was.
Like the sea.
Like breath.
Like love that doesn’t need to prove itself to exist.

And I—
I did not flinch.
I did not brace.
I opened like a prayer that forgot it was once afraid of being answered.

My lips,
once trained in silence,
spoke in the language of longing.
In the dialect of surrender.
In the sacred syllables of yes.

And it was not just you I kissed—
I kissed the version of me who stopped surviving.
Who stopped withholding her softness.
Who let her hips echo the ocean
and her chest become altar.

I kissed
the freedom of not needing to be understood,
only felt.

And we did not rush it.
We did not fear the future.
We simply became the present—
together.

Skin to sea.
Soul to flame.
Mouth to memory.

And when we pulled apart,
I swear the ocean clapped.
The wind wept.
And I knew—
forever had happened
in the in-between
of two trembling lips
and one holy, trembling breath.

Let them write songs about the lovers who lasted.
I will write poems
about the kiss that made time
stop pretending
to be linear.

And I will never
be the same
again—

Copyright © 2025 Sherley Delia | All rights reserved.

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