call_me_ishmael | more weird poetry

ship in a bottle
Tap on the glass.
They’ll find me lost among rudders and sails,
Watching concentrations of grime form into barnacles
And find waves crashing on wood.
The crew’s long gone–
Realizing their captain was just as clueless.
How does it feel,
To sleep on the cabin floor,
To curl up among frost,
And feel no warmth beside you?
How does it feel to wander the deck
And hear no chatter amongst your men?
Without a first mate or boatswain,
Searching for a whale without a man by your side.
Someone is going to take off the cork one day.
And they won’t find me at first,
But if they look closer,
They’ll find what’s left of me,
Alone at the bottom of a trench,
Laughing to myself with the words of others
I jotted down for later use,
False shells made of ink I’ve given names.
Because it’s so much easier
To dwell on memories
Than to leave the bottle
And feel the sun on my skin.

The taste of loneliness goes down easier than oxygen. I’ve gotten an addiction to drowning.
I’m sorry.
I should have done better.
the reason i’m afraid to resurface
is that they’ve already found out how to go on without me
and maybe, just maybe, they never needed me in the first place.
so i’ll drift away from this body,
live out each day in my own bottle,
and learn how to talk to the man in the mirror.