It can’t be real work If you don’t feel the grind It’s got to be painful Can’t let yourself slide Gamun! They would say Be in action this way Put that nose on the stone And grind it away So grind it I did Though once I did know The joy and the freedom Of feeling in flow Flow was a rhythm A music inside It smoothed out the edges Of pain in my life Flow my companion As dark as it seemed When I didn’t feel safe I could always daydream I’d dream of the person I needed to be To break from the bondage Soar up and fly free With jets on my feet And wings in my heart I dreamed of the day I could make a fresh start So hopeful I ran From a home full of pain And fled to the sea Trading snow for the rain On the shores of the land Where children had died I wept for myself To the ocean I cried … “Oh ocean my ocean In waters so deep Beloved Earth Mother Hold my tears as I weep To the ocean I cry Don’t leave me to die Hear passion in me And come to my side In my grief for a life I lived with such hope I’m broken it seems I feel like a joke” My tears soaked the land As the tide lapped the sand And the ocean held space With my head in my hands I cried for my father I cried for my mom I cried that I couldn’t Be the dutiful son I wept all the tears I had stopped long before When I couldn’t break down To a puddle on the floor But the ocean knows pain Sheds blood every day The waves create carnage And then wash it away The pain of the ocean To gulp children’s blood To drown a whole village In thousand-year floods The sea knows the pain Yet onward it flows Like breathing in tides And exhaling ghosts The sea can scream back As loud as you wish Can savagely end you Like sharks eat a fish Have I come here to die? Or heal what I’m shown? Could that be my choice? And could it be both? ‘Cause feeling those times When I wished I would die Feels like dying again And again the next time If healing is feeling And feeling’s like dying Then healing’s like killing The me that’s here crying A slaughter of me’s My blood in the water Like seals being hunted By the sharks being slaughtered The slaughter of me’s That I had to relive Every time I was slain And I had to forgive Forgive my belief I could be so harmed By people and things To the point of alarm The waves are still breathing After eons of slaughter All the blood I can shed Just a drop in the water