You’re from the South,
all heat and honey and stories told slow
and I’m from Indiana,
all flat fields and quiet people
trying not to say too much too loud.
We shouldn’t get each other.
Not really.
Our roads were carved by different hands,
different ghosts,
different reasons to run.
But somehow
here we are.
Both of us
barefoot in the same damn sand,
watching the tide smooth out things we didn’t know we were carrying.
You came here chasing something
a reset, a reason,
maybe just a wave that didn’t feel like the past.
And me?
I came here trying to remember who I was
before everything got so loud inside.
And we meet in the middle,
between sunscreen soaked shifts and seagulls,
talking about life like two old men
who’ve seen too much
but still believe in something easier
Man, it’s wild
how someone so not like you
can think exactly like you.
Can say “you know what I mean?”
and you do,
every damn time,
like your brain and mine
share a beach chair somewhere in the back of our heads.
We laugh at the same dumb shit,
stress over the same work problems,
but underneath all that,
we’ve cracked open pieces of truth
we didn’t think anyone else would recognize.
You, with your Southern past.
Me, with my Midwestern ache.
Both of us found something here
that wasn’t on the brochure
not just sun, not just waves,
but connection
in a world that mostly forgets how to do that.