Shipwrecked

 They once set sail together. Two bodies steady against the horizon. Eyes full of maps they had never read.

The sea was promised then. Salt tasting like forever, waves carrying them toward a shore.

One they swore they would find together.

But storms are patient. They rise in silence, tides swelling with words unsaid, winds howling the names they would not call.

The sails tore. The compass spun madly.

Neither knew when the journey stopped being about arrival and became only about survival.

Now they drift on a stranded island, a strip of sand between blame and silence.

She gathers shells, brittle and broken, each one reminding her of the things he cracked. He skips stones into the surf, pretending the water swallows his mistakes.

Both drink from the same bitter tide. Both curse the salt that dries their throats.

Yet neither will admit that they charted this wreck together.

The ocean around them waits, endless and indifferent. It does not care who was right, or who broke first.

It only knows that two souls built a raft of promises, and let it sink beneath the weight of their pride.

And so they remain. Marooned not by fate, but by the choice to keep pointing at the waves, instead of reaching for each other.

They came searching for forever, but drowned in the truth: love is not lost.

It is abandoned.