Hope Cox
I call for your help as I sail these lonely seas,
but you don’t hear my drowning yelps.
Shall I scream louder?
The salty seawater swallows
my voice as I muster the courage –
to yell for help, but to no avail.
My efforts sail away in vain.
The pain -bubbling within my choked pleas – is
too much to bear alone.
I wait beneath the surface for my prince to arrive, to
pull me out of the Dead Sea,
but that only happens in the fairy tales my
parents used to read to me.
The pages are torn and smudged with salty tears,
barely clinging to their woven covers.
I don’t know how much longer
these withered pages can survive.
My depression continues to sail
with a hole in its side,
but soon it will sink into the sea.
The moonlit prince that once guided me
through stormy seas and midnight tears
vanished within the storybook’s crevasses – lost
between unfinished chapters.
I wallow in despair, with
no time to spare.
Another prince arrives too late for
my fairy tale’s happy ending.
My fears swallow me whole.
The evil sea witch’s appetite is now full as
she drags me across the ashened coal.
The pain, my constant friend,
arrives unannounced,
makes herself at home
and never says when she’ll leave.
As a cruel reminder of the scars in my heart
carved by the sea dragon king of my twilight castle.
The sea knows no bounds
as he swims through the recesses of my trauma at night, in
the losing battle of my psyche.
He sold his soul to the sea witch
and tried to steal mine.
I am a child forever trapped in a cursed treasure chest.
Someone, please find me, I beg of you.
Dig me out from this dark, cold, miserable place,
and bring me to the surface.
I want to breathe in this enchanted air once more
before I succumb to the dark, harrowing thoughts at
the bottom of the sea.
Death no longer frightens me as it once did.
One day, I’ll bid my final farewell – drowning,
crying,
gasping,
smiling.
A grand event it might become – a
sweet, delightful escape
from this cruel world
I once, upon a time, called mine.