He was born where the land slips quietly into sea,
in a village of square voices and straight roads,
where boys were taught to cast lines,
never questions.

 

He was quiet, like mist before morning,
more drawn to the hush between gull cries
than to the clamor of games.
He wandered the dunes alone,

 

watching wind carve paths through sand,
marveling at how the sea returned
each time it was turned away.
It became his language.

 

He once held a secret in his palm,
small and trembling like a tide pool fish.
He kept it safe,
not for fear, but reverence.

 

The others ran forward with certainty,
names of futures already placed in their mouths.
He lingered at the edge,
letting the sea unmake footprints behind him.

 

He loved things that did not belong,
a bent shell, a crooked shadow,
the way the horizon refused to be a wall.

 

The village spoke in straight lines.
He listened in curves.

 

In time, he learned that not every silence
means shame.
Some are oceans waiting to be called home.

 

And so he walked,
never far from the water,
letting it remember
the shape he could not speak aloud.