Lost At Sea

Lost At Sea

Where have you gone, hope?
I search for you
on my lips
and in my heart,
yet you have stolen yourself
from my sight.
Have you simply disappeared,
or have you eloped with another,
leaving me a withering soul
as my only memory of you?
Am I doomed
to suffocate
on my own dreariness,
drown in my tears,
or simply fade away,
a shadow of my old self?
How do you expect me
to have any chance
in this people-eat-people world
when you have devoured
all that I've aspired to be,
leaving me with an empty plate?
I'm up a creek
with no boat,
floundering for reason,
answers drifting past
on the splashing tides,
but never staying long enough
for me to read them.
I've held on to you,
a rock in my life,
for so long.
So now that you've
broken out of the riverbed,
I find that I've forgotten how to swim.
And unless you catch me,
I'll be free-falling to rock bottom
soon enough.

Maybe someone will
come looking for me.
But when your own hope
has given up on you,
what's to stop everyone else
from doing the same?