The briny breathes of the Humber welcomed my parents to the its shores,

and left their cheeks flushed along with their hair unkempt.

The sight of my windswept mother brought my father to gales in such great strength that he almost

fell into the water. She was of lighthearted humor and laughed along.

 

Maybe it was in belief of deride, or the oddity of our laughter.

But, in short notice, the tide came about prematurely,

extending its waves to my father’s leather shoes

and startling my mother.

 

Small waves formed in the distance,

ones that only I could see,

picking up small height until they caught a wind.

 

As we watched the spectacle of the waves,

a discomfort came about at my tongue,

as if the saline waters had shared a secret with my submerged toes

and now awaited a reply.

 

Who was I to speak to? which had shared the secret?

Mother? Oh, I love you mother with all my being

and even the fictitious threads of my lies.

Father? Thank you for lending me your armor,

for I wouldn't withstand the grating truths

or the vivid twilight terrors.

Humber?

 

Mother must have caught sight of my irresolute crisis

and soon we left, interrupting the message- from

whoever it might have been.

 

I had a feeling Mother knew the secret

or had at least found it first. But as it turns out,

she must've dropped the mollusk before knowing

of the secret. And so she returned, I heard,

about twenty four weeks later.

 

It must have been of the highest secrecy, and evoked highest curiosity.

For Father went along too.

Eventually.

 

I heard he greeted them with a kiss of zephyr,

and it was believed they would soon return.

But Humber must have offered something stronger,

gales, most likely, such like the ones my father

had greeted Humber with. And so mother stayed,

never too fond of water, at the shore.

 

But Humber was persistent,

and with baskets of comber he submerged her in its home.

Taking her to its depths and stripping her off all contact;

her tongue must have swollen,

and without speech I heard her mind dwindled

  -I thought it would've swollen.

 

By the eighteenth week of her visit,

Humber was still carrying on, however described as a passive host,

and soon stripped my mother of everything she had been;

of Botticelli's witness, Hamlet's disposition, the memories,

her speech, of God!, and writing.

 

By the end, although I refuse to believe,

my father claimed he could see nothing from the shore

it all too much seemed like a bag of bones,

floating atop the surface of life-

meekly obeying the waves,

listening to its secrets.