Echoes Off Shore
written by: Leon Drake
The bottle sweats
more than I do—
cheap red bleeding into the sand
like it’s trying to confess something.
The ocean doesn’t care.
It keeps talking anyway,
slapping the shore
like an old man repeating a story
no one stayed to hear.
I drink to keep up with it.
Salt in the air,
salt in the mouth,
salt in whatever part of me
still remembers her name
but won’t say it out loud.
A gull laughs—
or chokes—
hard to tell the difference anymore.
The tide creeps closer
like it knows I won’t move,
like it’s patient enough
to take me in pieces.
I raise the bottle
to nothing in particular,
to everything I lost
and everything that never bothered to stay.
The ocean answers
the only way it knows how—
by coming back
again
and again
and again.
Leon Drake, is a Toronto based poet who has been published through the years online and in print. He lets his writing speak for him for arr is the vest side of us.
Latest posts by Leon Drake (see all)
- Echoes Off Shore - May 5, 2026
