Modern Romanticism

Shattered by
a written destiny.
A formless promise,
to be defied, if only
her river will run
the other direction.

She stares, from outside
a storm's interior,
examining all that has
decor upon decor,
until it goes from white
to black, in the stillness
of another anchored night.

She fears for her inability
to find it in herself, to release,
into an ocean's coming ease.

She continues to intake,
to inhale, never exhaling
all she means to repeat.

To change, to become
anything other than this,
in this solidified stagnation.

She hangs forced expressions
on an immaculate canvas.

She shelters her own shadow
in a den full of screams.

To that same ocean,
will she ever be able
to thin its crowd
of phantom ships?

I beg for her to be
first in line, first of her
unknown kind,
floating on towards
a lighthouse beacon.