in the confined walls of the Shawshank Prison Andy Dufrense said,

he wants to live in a place that has no memory,

like the pacific.

i walked along the coastline all day

trying to find this promised mirage of absence

with sand in my skin, and silt in my teeth,

i looked to the sea for answers and it crashed into me with malice:

at the harbour of forgetting, all i found were empty bottles.

in its infinitum, how can the sea not remember

that its folds hold the incomplete lives of so many,

has the sea forgotten all the souls it swallowed?

that on its bed of rest, among the seaweed and the sediment

lie the bodies of those whose homes were burnt

they sought the sea and its salt to put out the fire,

but it seems the water forgot that its purpose is to extinguish the flames

not bury the survivors.

i return to my bed that night with the ghost of memory and a bag of seashells

i put one of them to my ear to drown out the symphony of sirens

and listen to the sound of the ocean

but all i hear is the wailing of my mother

i crush the the seashell in my palm and from its debris

something small and wet crawls out

“why did you break my home”, it asks me

i smile at the pitiful creature, “anything borne from violence can never rest”.