What the Sea Keeps

There is a bench on the cliff at Tarrafal
where the ocean is so loud
you cannot have a conversation,
only a witnessing.

My grandmother's grandmother
did not leave from a port she chose
and did not arrive in a country she chose
and still her name survived
the way a name survives a fire:
half-burnt, and mostly legible.

The sea keeps what it keeps.
The sea also returns, sometimes —
a word in the wrong mouth,
a song half-remembered at a wedding,
a kitchen full of food
from a country nobody in the kitchen
has seen.

I am the return, and I know it,
and I do not know what it costs the sea
to send me back.