When I’m sad I write about the sea. I grew up on the blue and vastness is such an easy connotation. Think about the world’s loneliest whale, calling out at a pitch no one else can hear. Hello. My father insisted we move to the Costa Blanca because he’d become ill without the sea. It took him twelve years of my life and many a ruined Christmas to empty his heart. Hello. It was awful opening presents on the beach. All that crashing and off he stumbles to the chiringuito, no cares because he can’t remember them. I am eight with sand between my toes, asking if alguien sabe donde está mi papá. The sea doesn’t answer. A critic finds it alienating when I don’t speak English in my poetry. Hola. I didn’t write this to hold your hand; I am trying to hold my father’s. He is in another dive bar, I am refusing to leave the house, blaming it on the sun until my skin turns blue. Hello. Why did he yearn for that emptiness, leave in a boat with a crate of beer and occasionally me. Once, he knocked himself out, fell deep with an Estrella in hand. I watched blood rise to the surface like an exotic fish, called for help but the night didn’t hello. I don’t remember how he lived 
but he did. How’s that for resolution. I woke one morning shocked by the sight of my veins; thought they’d been drawn on, looked around for the culprit. All this blue on me and who’s to blame. It took me all this time to notice. Empty house. Where waves break.