SANDCASTLE - A POEM BY MICHAEL SORBELLO

The sea is my graveyard

a gaping mouth full of corpses

painted with a bleak canvas of tears

wallowing in gloom and filth

swallowing every broken piece of me

dragging me into the icy depths of despair

forsaking me to a bottomless chasm of darkness

just like you did all those years ago.

Comatose on the weeping shores

my motionless body imprinted in the sand

like an infected stab wound that keeps spreading wider

cold tendrils of water tug at my feet

like the fingertips of a thousand ghosts

dragging me out to sea

the tides keep rising higher

and I keep sinking lower.

I lie upon the weeping shore

where once I built you a castle of sand

a foundation of my love for you

held up by spires of dust

hardened by the embrace of the sea

before the waves tore it down before my eyes

while you walked away without turning back

and the gulls cried me a funeral song of crumbling trust.

All alone on this frigid shore

above me a world of darkness

all around me a world of aching silence

feelings washed away by the azure starkness of the sea

draining me until I'm hollow

wave after wave crashing over everything I once held dear

until the memories of her heartless cruelty are all I have left.

Years wasted building castles for no one

castle after castle

assaulted by the rain

battered by the waves

devoured by the depths

collapsing all around me

dissolving into nothing

a war on my heart

a typhoon of your narcissistic puppetry

drowning me in your pool of misery and deceit

your spite was the sea itself.

All those naive smiles

all those passionless kisses

all those fleeting moments of devious joy

were swept away by your frigid waves

leaving us to drift for eternity without purpose.

You drowned us all

with your lips of bitter poison

sinking everything we shared

demolishing my will to live

because every sandcastle I built was a fragment of my love for you

and you toppled over all of them.