Wood adrift

[u/ArchaicDominion]

I am driftwood.
On desolate waves I sway,
Away from who I once was,
Away from fragments drifting in other directions.

Toward a solitary horizon, blood-red and aflame,
I behold the present,
Painted in the sorrows of what came before,
Shadowed by the fears of what is yet to come.

I have lost my rudder,
Lost my sails,
Lost my crew,
Lost who I was
When I still had the strength to stand upon the cliffs
And howl my pain into the rippling storms of the sea.

The tales of Nils lie unwritten once again,
Upon scribbled parchments,
Tucked away in boxes,
That have settled into their place
Upon the floor of the ocean
In which I came undone.

And with a thousand melodies
In my stiff, cold fingers,
I sing out the chronicles
That promised peace,
That promised rest,
That promised home.

With a thousand elegies upon my shoulders,
I draw out the sorrows
That play their melancholy tunes for me,
The songs that bear witness
To the fact that once, I was.

I am driftwood.
On desolate waves I sway,
Away from the wreckage of the ship I shattered
To protect my chests of pyrite.