The Current

Crestfallen, empty, overflowing with the sludge

Pouring from tar-tainted breath,

I wilt. I blossom. I perish.

The shadow of a hawk ripples across my pale petals

While perfectly tolerable heat makes me weep.

I ache with the toxicity of blame.

When will I be able to dip my hands in the

Sweeping green lights of night?

When will the shackles of earth and stone and words

Brimming with vitriolic hate shatter?

Never, tomorrow, today.

.

Never.

.

My neck is hooked in the chain of a rusted anchor

And I am watching the rays of sunlight disappear

As I sink through the silt and sand and life

To the forgotten depths of the bleak ocean.

There is no flourishing in the abyss.

There is no respite from the suffocating pressure

Stretching miles above my head.

Shipwrecks pass me by.

I dream of pale summer skies and the fresh green

Of trees waving in the wind.

There is nothing but the current sweeping across my skin.

.

Haunting me.

.

The coral, dead and alive, wave goodbye

Roughly brushing against and stinging my fingertips.

Goodbye, goodbye to the visions of grandeur

Floating on the tongue of autumn like candy.

The murky depths have seized me.

I have fallen off the edge of a cliff and not even

Our own disasters remain this far down.

I am cursed to endure the haze of the depths.

I beg through bursting bubbles for the pressure

To crack my skull but it has promised Poseidon

That it will cradle my life safely for the rest of forever.

.

I am left to endure.

.

I am left to remain.

.

The goblin sharks and rattail fish leave me be.

Too sour for their tastes, too normal for their appetites,

I sit and wait for the millennia of dead and dying creatures

To fall from above, coat me in snow,

And bury the last of my exposed skin.

No one can see me.

I am camouflaged by death.

It blankets me and I am too terrified to move

Because it covers my eyes too

And in some degenerate way,

I am glad to be blind to the darkness.

.

Time doesn’t end.

.

It is infinite.

Despite my blindness to the darkness,

The current still sways, lifts my hair, and takes the tears

Out of the corners of my eyes as though they were never mine.

They were never mine.

They belonged to the undulating mass of water now

Swallowing heartbeat, breath, and brainwaves.

I played pretend and dreamt that they belonged to the sky instead.

The heaviness pounds against my eardrums.

Time is infinite, sprawling out around me like the waters,

Filling mouth and lungs alike until I am vibrating with it.

.

I am stuck in the sand.

.

The ticking of the universe, the flow of this mass of water

Tugging on my eyelashes and dripping down my hands,

Will never slow or stutter or stop.

It is woven into the fabric of the ocean,

A careful little thread amidst a very large cloak.

It breathes like a wound.

Somehow, through nightmare or dream, I have been shackled,

Threaded into the patchwork quilt of the universe.

The shadows trail overhead, heavy as they brush my floating hair,

While the pressure in my chest fractures, ruptures,

Leaving me with the space I once had in my lungs.

.

Time ticks in me too.

.

- Silver Serpent Books