hold your ear against the fabric of
reality in search of a higher purpose,
you're thrown into a desperate ocean.
You and me ended up in these
existential waters, like that.
Helpless, drifting and hallucinating,
while trying make meaning out
of this salinity.
But the waves here aren't made
of water. They reek of confession,
compulsive guilt and self-humiliation
that comes after forced sarcasm.
You made gods out of language,
fed meaning to every passing cloud,
Tried to tame the wild thing in me
with tenderness. and without noticing
Didn't you become 'Pi' like that?
And I, Richard Parker. Not fierce,
just an animal, too wounded to admit
I have grown used to your companionship.
And this raft between us-
these exchanged poems,
these metaphors stitched together as
survival manuals.
We fed on verses like it's a wisdom
that guide us out of the abyss.
and somewhere between casual words
and crafted poems, our instincts
disappeared and we became witness
to each other's drowning.
You fed me your attention, and I circled
your loneliness, like I would worship it forever.
And, to be frank, I survived the ocean
because of you.
But somewhere I know why
a beast should never forget his teeth
out of gratitude.
That’s why I keep warning you.
That, one day, land will arrive-
Reality will return like a coastline
neither of us asked for.
And when it does, I'm afraid my
old instincts will crawl back into me.
The instinct to vanish, to ghost.
To walk into the jungle without turning back.
Not because you meant nothing.
But because creatures like me only know
how to survive through departure.