call in your royal heart

mermaid tears & mourning hearts

mermaid tears
sarah e webb
 
across the Atlantic,
          along another shore
the  ocean opened.

a morning offering  
of broken hearts –				

 frosted lavender  
                       
                             milky white  &

   bold 
   bottled 
   blue  

glass shards –

their wounds
licked smooth  

by the sea.

every  heart

its own                rare beauty.
 
                 oh Katie, 

 you were     our 	   rare beauty.

---

I wrote this poem at the beginning of the summer, upon learning of the sudden passing of a young woman I met on the Isle of Lewis. Although she was someone I barely knew, she left an enormous imprint nonetheless.

On the afternoon she died, I went down to Swim Beach to put my hand in the cool waters and console my soul with sea glass. For twenty-one summers, this has been my ritual—to go to the shore and fill my pockets with low-tide treasure.

It’s a practice of patience and slowing. Of getting close to the ground, of letting your eyes adjust, then softly, softly allowing what’s already there to begin to emerge. To trust and lean into the possibility of knowing that of all the things you could have found, you were drawn to this, and you never know what “this” might be.

On that day, for the first time, the ocean opened, offering an abundance of broken hearts.

Every season tells a story.

2025 has been my summer of sea glass hearts—sometimes cloudy, others misshapen with jagged edges, but each one unmistakably a heart, because in what has felt like a year of unfathomable loss, even on Monhegan, you can only escape so far.

It began with the death of a woman I had just begun to know. Then another passing—a college friend taken too early. Then the floods in Texas and constant contact with a friend, knowing that even though her daughter and her camp were safe, it would be days before she could find her way home into the arms of her mother, and knowing all the more, that what felt like unendurable waiting, was still far more than the parents of the twenty-seven girls of Camp Mystic would ever be able to do.

And then the passing of the poet, Andrea Gibson.

I didn’t know her personally, but I felt as if I did because, like many, I came to love myself and all my flaws through the kindness of her writing and the dignity in how she lived her life, welcoming everything she was offered with tenderness.

          oh Andrea,

you were     our      rare beauty.

There are times when life guts you, forcing you to pause unexpectedly.

I’ve had such moments in my life, especially on this island. Moments that have broken my heart, but I’ve come to know that’s the point of living—to feel everything because

just to be clear | I don’t want to get out | without a broken heart | I intend to leave this life | so shattered | there better be a thousand separate heavens | for all of my separate parts

call in your Royal Heart.

One of the things I love about sea glass is how its beauty is derived from brokenness. Sharp shards polished with patience and the process of time. It’s an intuitive trust—from what you throw into the salt water, there will be healing and unimaginable rewards.

As it did when I learned of Katie’s passing, it happened again on July 14, the morning Andrea Gibson died. At 4:16 a.m. on the West Coast, the tide was receding on Monhegan, revealing another abundance of broken hearts.

So many mourning hearts.

I dropped the hearts into a quilted jar, then left the rest of my bounty on a flat rock near the Red House, hoping for someone else to find. Many hours later, I couldn’t believe the sea glass was still there. I expressed my surprise to a friend who happened to be sitting nearby, then encouraged her to take the glass home to receive as a gift from the sea. And she did.

Later that evening, I told a small boy where he could locate the rest of the glass, whispering that if he found the pile, it was meant to be his.

In the morning, all the sea glass was gone.

I still wonder why no one touched the glass on their own volition. Was it because it was thought to “belong” to someone else? Or perhaps, there isn’t the same delight of scooping up sea glass already in plain sight. Perhaps it’s that the gift is in the discovery of the treasures that are buried in the ocean. The discovery of the treasures buried deep within us all.

I’ve been collecting these hearts all summer, not exactly knowing yet who they’re for, but maybe that’s the point—we don’t always know who we might touch along the way. But if we're lucky, we touch someone. We make an imprint. We press our hearts into the hands of another. We hold on tight, until we let go.

This morning, my sweetheart is arriving. My second chance at love. The one when I finally got it right. The one I’ll never wait that extra twenty minutes to text back when all I know is our lives have been hard enough already.¹ I hope you also have someone to hold close, to tell them how much they mean to you.

Call in your Royal Heart.

I’m leaving you with a few of my favorite lines from Andrea Gibson’s poem, “Birthday, for Jenn.”

Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands, 
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.

If you have a favorite poem or passage, I’d love it if you'd share it in the comments for all of us to hold.

Thanks for reading.

xosew

P.S. There’s still one space for Braiding Sweetgrass, because you never know what you’ll discover on an island … . ..

gathering (in grace) notes • writing circle

Begin your week gathering in good company!

Every Monday, 7:30 - 8:30 am ET, I host an online writing circle to encourage a creative start to the week. Each week, you are invited to come as you are. We greet one another before sitting in a moment of silence. I’ll offer a poem and a prompt for those days you don’t know how to begin, and then we write for 60 minutes with our screens on or off—that’s it!

This is a free offering for all. If you find you are attending regularly and wish to make a donation in support of maintaining the space, you can always buy me a book. register once, and the link is yours forever ✍🏻

and… . .. one more space… . .. join me on retreat .. .

Braiding Sweetgrass: Breathing Stories

September 17-21, 2025 | Monhegan, ME

For the fifth year, I invite you to join me for an intimate retreat on Monhegan. Our program is an embodied book group, journeying and journaling through the wisdom and words of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s memoir Braiding Sweetgrass with the magic of Monhegan. I’m thrilled to consider the possible ways Kimmerer’s storytelling will become the guide to writing our own. Together, we will write through the island's topography, the geography of our senses, and our storied experiences. There will be ample time to search for sea glass and hike the trails through Cathedral Woods to the rocky shores of Pebble Beach.

Through writing, ritual, and restorative yoga, we will meditate, celebrate, and honor the variations of our authentic voices, as can only happen when you find yourself on this artist's island 10 miles out to sea.

lingering line… . ..

good grief, let your heart break, so your spirit doesn’t

Andrea Gibson

1. Royal Heart, Andrea Gibson, paraphrased