risky sea chanty

there are way too many ghosts that spring out on a night like this, cold and starry and full of some kind of new music that i haven't been able to hold firmly in my hands, the notes flip in and out between the murmurs in my heart, it's a strange dance, and every time i give in, i can't sleep and the room fills up with characters that are almost but not quite familiar.  there's a parade of agendas trying to catch my attention and all i say, it's the same thing every time, all i say is i don't know if she knows, i don't think she knows, she has to know, but i don't think she knows.  and the birds keep singing to calm us down, and i don't know, and i decide, this is my decision, i'm going to say this very clearly, and i can lay out the maze of my heart on the sheets and say, i think she knows the way in, of all the people who think they know the way, i think she knows the way, and i can tell you, i can tell all of my ghosts, but i can't tell her, not directly, so it's a season of careful patterns that have a hundred meanings that change direction, and we can only talk in morse code on the old tree trunks that make their way to the bottom of this place, somewhere the waves can't reach.  it's a strange enchantment, and it's songs and pattens keep repeating, and i don't even know if they'll look the same by the time they reach the surface, and the sounds are all muffled.  i sleep alone, and i like it that way, whenever i settle, i always miss the one i am always looking for, and it's been long enough, enough moons between then and now, to understand that we have something important to teach each other, but i can't say the words. i can find the words, i know the words, but every sentence begins with something that i can't complete, not out loud, not here, or not yet, and i'm like that god, the one that gets torn in a hundred pieces and scattered over the water, and every piece wonders what that would be like, or if it would all be forgotten, by the time the human voices can say the words, if the maze of this murmuring heart would be so tangled up in its own sentences that it might forget that it's amazed, enchanted into amazement, because i think you know the way.