Kthaahthikha

The weather was chill.

She was sitting by the figurehead.

The sea coughed up waves amidst the wash and rill

And the sky was grey and dead.

He name was Angeline, or so they say,

The colour of her hair like fine-spun blood.

And when she looked at me her eyes;

They made me feel that I might die -

But it wasn’t I.

When the waves swallowed her, screaming,

The water rising and falling, streaming

From the bulwarks, wrapping around

And sucking her down into the waves,

I decided that perhaps I was dreaming.

I returned to my berth,

A nervous wreck,

I imagined there had been

Some angel’s hands about her neck,

Choking gently,

Carrying her to the bulwark,

Casting her down as I watched in horror,

The waves sweeping around

As she drowned,

And the sea laughed and my head spun

For lying in my bed I could not refute

What I had done.

The recollection of better days,

It wrapped about me as I lay in a haze;

The rain pattering upon the top deck

I, falling deeper and deeper into the dreck,

Could feel only the water all around me

As it drowned me

And the sound would hound me as

I lay upon the soft, warm cotton;

And the oil of the lantern cast a yellow light,

Banishing night in that close chamber,

That wooden cell with the whale-oil smell

And the waves that crashed against the hull

Like little fists.

They would fish for her,

Run lines into the sea,

But they’d never find her,

Never suspect me.

I had only myself to contend with, but oh!

What fierce contention,

The remonstrating eyes that sat within the shadows,

Those gleaming points that rested above a smiling mouth.

Uncouth mouth; hissing at me;

Kissing at me;

Shimmering between one and the other

And those dark pools glimmering at me.

Caught within the cast glow

Of the lantern;

‘Slattern! Slattern!’ I cried

On and on into the darkness,

As I crouched beneath the wool

Feeling ever the fool,

Feeling cruel,

Questioning my every fibre

As that demon, that treason

Of my conscience lurched towards me,

Creaking and croaking

Beneath the sea

It approached me

And all that I could do was weep

And feel ever more the fool,

Deep within the cool

Dark abyss of the sea

It laid a hand upon me

And we were joined between the swaying weeds

The screeds of jilted lovers that littered the ocean floor

Littered it long, long before…

New company had found them,

And this companion, greyed and milky-eyed,

Slipped daintily between them,

The fabric of its costume all grey-dyed

By the waters, that swirled a league above,

And streamed forth from its smile,

Writhing through the shadows

Like some distorted crocodile.

And while I screamed my endless silent scream,

And prayed and prayed that it was but a dream,

That hand that fell upon me, cold and damp,

Shocked me into action – There a lamp!

And behind this lamp, two little eyes that burnt,

The twin orbs of the mate, sent-forth to fetch me.

‘A squall has brewed and torn the masts asunder,

We’ll soon be swallowed wholesale by the sea’.

Wow! This is totally unlike the kind of stuff I'd think you'd write.

I'll take it as complement.

...and without guilt, of course.