Maiden Voyage

c. 2014

Maiden Voyage

A ship that sails out to sea

Is a splendid thing;

People talk, the waves rock,

And the bow begins to swing.

The wind starts fair, the cool ocean air

Is strangely settling

But the sun dies down, the wind growls

And the sky begins to scream.

It happens all at once, it seems,

but you think that you’ll pull through;

positivity is a vital thing

when you don’t have a clue.

The waves pick up, you can barely see

And, in time, you knew; you knew

What was going to happen and

That there was nothing you could do.

Trapped out on the sea so wild

With little hope that you’ll survive,

You think to the day you started

And all the dreams that you revived.

Then, it was bright and sunny

But now the storm has arrived

And no one prepared you for this day,

So you fear you won’t get by.

The rain is all around you,

You can barely even think,

Your heart is beating like a drum,

And your eyes refuse to blink

So you just barely see it:

The tiniest little chink.

You feel the water rushing in,

Unsure of what to do.

There’s no one there to help

And you don’t have a clue.

You’re alone, on your own,

This you know is true

Because anyone who loved you

Would be here, sinking too.

The air slams against the boat,

Sending cold chills up your spine

Like icy razors cutting through

The insanity in your mind

But in the moment, it’s not so bad;

It seems to slow down time

And gives you moments to contemplate

What’s really happening in your life.

The ship, the storm, the icy wind

Are all figments in your dream;

But the panic that you feel is real,

The pain is exactly what it seems.

You’re drowning in your thoughts, you know

This is a steady theme

Of all the recurring nightmares,

And they just get more extreme.

An escape is nearly impossible,

You’ve tried and tried again

To regain the person you once were

But it’s hopeless in the end.

You can smile and you can act

Like everything’s okay

But the feelings come rushing back

At the end of every day.

You’re searching for a hand to hold,

Someone that you can say

Lifted you out of your darkest thoughts

And never goes away.

But no one’s there to pull you through,

You’re left to fight alone

Since they turned their back on you

And left you in the nightmare zone.

You scrape and claw the day away,

Trying with all your might

To force the stormy skies away

And finally see the light.

At this point, it’d be better

To just give up the fight,

But you can’t do that to yourself

So you continue you plight.

You scream and cry and scar and starve

All the while making no sound

So the people who do see you

Don’t know you’re being drowned.

The waves are rough, the lightning flashes,

And your soul is coming unwound;

You don’t know where or who you are

And there’s no hope for rebound.

The mast sways in the mighty winds,

Silencing your screams.

The cuts and scrapes burn underneath

The salty rain that fell in reams.

The cuts sting like nothing else

But it’s your first feeling in weeks

So you hold on to that pain

And you slowly begin to think.

You remember the day you first set sail,

You remember the storm as it came,

You remember the sanity it washed away

But you push away your shame.

Your footing isn’t stable

from the pounding of the drink

and your eyesight’s a little clouded

from the dark thoughts you began to think

but you force your way to the front of the ship

with a bounding leap because

you may have sprung a leak, my friend,

but you refuse to sink.