How Do You Settle?

Where would you settle, honey?
Do you find the streets too rough on your feet?
Do they get softer closer to the beach?
Do the broken shells sell you their stories
of how they washed out from the sea?
Do you find them in common with all your heart's pleas,
that despite all the trying it's always denied
and could never swim like the tears you couldn't hold in your eyes?
What about how steady the sand held your body,
with your arms on your knees as you sat hunched
while your stomach unknotted?
Did you feel all the days' poisons wash out?
What started to matter with the night coming down?
Was it how being together alone never felt any better,
or how it felt to finally get the air's salty sweet letters?
And how could you ever leave such a place,
or did you know it wasn't yours to keep,
but what you could keep were the letters locked in your heart
when you're back in the places where all the poisons get started?
Won't you tell me how you settle, honey?