The red is not a gown—

  it is a signal.

 

Not meant to allure,

but to warn.

 

It speaks a final language

on the surface of the sea,

where the tide parts from the stone.

What remains is not a person,

but a boundary,

a being unclaimed by either shore.

 

He was never meant to stay.

He is only briefly stranded—like a dream, half-told.