Measured in Sails (poem)

The wound in being held back doesn’t scar the age, but the mind and behavior.

I often find myself adrift to these emotions that come and go between fleets

Docked at the harbor, they’re sailboats with tied masts, whilst I drift further away. Perhaps I subconsciously let it happen or was it the confession that masks their willingness to converse with me? 

The bond broke two, yet only one was still tied. 

Mapping these seas, I’ve sailed for nearly thirteen years. Countless of times I have endured the aftermath, storm that follows rejection. Their looks, their quiet responses, the silent distance. 

But a bruised ship has a hardened hull.

The stronger titanium of change after every reckoning.

I do not simply wish to remain idle and expect a sudden sunshine and gusts of wind to blow them to my side.

I can dock, I can read the pools in their eyes, their otherworldly waters filled with unspoken words. 

I will not sink because of one measly iceberg when there had been three others just like it with the same proclamation. The same number of familiars and more.

Because through a storm comes warmer, newer waters, waters that some sails and hulls can’t bear unless put together. 

The white, beautiful sails of youth will be lost. So many holes and tears it has had in my lifetime.

By the date in April, when the clock strikes 12:01 a.m. The mark of the sixteenth day, I’ll raise my black sails and sail away to the new and unchartered waters in the night beneath the nose of others. 

After all, the life of an adult is much colder…

 

 

 

 

Author: Lily Ross

Life is an open book with blank pages. From what you learn and experience, that is your ink. From these roots of your being and by the hand you write with feeling, that is your quill. I fill my book daily as if it were my own journal, expressing not just myself, but my passion and devotion for the subject at hand. No matter what that may be.

3 thoughts on “Measured in Sails (poem)”

  1. I like the way you were able to express yourself in this the knowledge and details of the sip and water and the lowkey titanic reference is absolute cinema!

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