The Sea That Never Forgets

The ocean keeps no silence.
It hums in the bones of shells,
it breathes in salt-stained winds,
it carries centuries
folded beneath its restless skin.

Every wave is a page,
written, erased, rewritten,
a diary too vast for human eyes,
too heavy for human hands.
It remembers the sailors
who carved their hopes into its horizon,
their laughter scattered like gulls,
their tears swallowed
before they touched the deck.

It remembers the ones who never returned—
pockets of air still rising
where lungs once begged for breath,
rings sinking into trenches,
letters dissolved into foam.
The ocean has cradled their final confessions,
held their last words in its mouth,
never releasing them,
never forgetting.

Prayers, too, drift upon its surface—
rosaries dropped from trembling fingers,
whispers tucked inside folded palms.
The sea collects them greedily,
threads them into tides,
lets them rock in rhythm
until they sound less like sorrow,
more like lullabies.

And yet, the ocean is not cruel.
It does not mock what it holds.
It only remembers—
with patience, with depth,
with the ache of something
that can never be emptied.

Stand by the shore,
and you will hear it:
the ocean speaking in fragments,
a chorus of voices braided into surf.
Not every secret was meant to be buried.
Not every prayer was meant to be answered.
But all of them—
all of them—
were meant to be remembered.

- Khushi Kaul