Your Sinister Poetry

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…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’ll 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.