快播

By: Aston Benson

Poetry, 2019

We were a sinking ship. The decaying wood saturated, and cracking with splinters allowed us to fill until our buoyancy refused to be enough to keep us afloat. We were slowly engulfed鈥�and we sank.

And yet, you were poetry.

Not because of the innocence I saw in your long, curled eyelashes resting on your freckled cheeks as you slept. Or the way you constantly reminded me of my beauty; your infatuation a drug I overdosed on.

But because you inspired the kind of poetry that divulges a bleeding heart.

The kind that inflicted heartache on the emotionally content.

The kind I wrote sobbing and trembling, imploring myself I fell short because my love left you unsatisfied and desiring the assurance of any woman who voiced your name.

So, I left.

I dove into the brine, dodging the carnage of what once was a sturdy craft. Treading reluctantly, I managed to keep to the surface.

In the delirium of exhaustion, I cursed the stars for the way we broke.

Weeks of wading alone in the frigid tide, I eventually pulled myself ashore. Raking myself across the sand, fatigued and weary, I made a discovery. An ethereal projection from the stars? A message found in a bottle? How it was received I am unsure, but this I do know: it was mediocrity. Mediocre effort and mediocre love you tried to sell as something heavenly.

This is the last I鈥檒l write of you, for I have made my peace. I have loved myself whole and assembled my own ship that will not rot into the sailing corpse we once were.