Safe in the Arms of the Sea

I know the jagged rocks exist, though I no longer have an affinity for danger. These days, I am master of my ship.  I chart my own course.  Keep to the deep water. 

I can see him clearly now-more clearly than the day I met him, and I realize he was akin to a brigantine, recklessly sailed and doomed to flounder.  Raven hair, worn long and wild, and eyes that changed color with the changing tides of his moods.  Sometimes falcon, and sometimes dove. An impossibly irresistible, unholy trinity of leather and rum and tobacco.

My pirate.

Part tempest, and part gentleman, I tried in vain to learn the art of forecasting the weather that swirled around him.  At times he brandished words like a razor sharp cutlass, warning me to keep my distance.  Other times, though, when the winds were fair, he beckoned me closer with roses and his own brand of sugar, the sweetest I’d ever tasted.  He even slid a promise of pearl and silver onto my ring finger, and asked me to wait for him while he was away, prowling the vast ocean in a hunt for other ships to plunder.

He never returned. 

I realize it now.  His misfortune was my salvation.

The rocks are still there-only instead of tormenting me, I find my ears are deaf to their siren song.  And as for the rigging that threatened to ensnare me on that doomed voyage so long ago, like the gossamer strands in a spider’s web.  I see them for what they have become.

Cobwebs.