Wrecked

What if we're living
in the belly of a whale
it gulped us all down
with our pills and Unfollows
and we can't help ourselves
we dared it to swallow
and it's been longer than three days
and longer than three nights, and
our world is taking place
inside this whale's mouth
while the angels lay low
with their grandly folded wings
in the safety of the whales in our souls

And there are other whales, too
like the one inside our guts
caught in the belly of a beast
flooded with our lack of trust
rocking and swinging to the dread of it
and then there's the whale
tossed around inside our heads
filled with our fragile, unspoken things
battered and soaked from the sorrow of it
and that one last whale in our hearts
our loneliness seeping into its mouth
as it thrashes back and forth
to the beat of it

A whale within a whale within a whale
all of them needing
a breath at the surface
a bellowing of their windpipes
from the cruel hum of us within
but they're wrecked at the bottom
with our earth dust and rage
the whales are all drowning
and, we, along with them
in the depths of our fears
the whales, they are calling
and our spirits, they're starving
but our eyes, they can't find the tears.


©Sherri Brannon


Our world needs a healing. I feel the weight of it so strongly that every single poem I write lately is about this.

I created my whale digitally in Procreate, on my iPad Pro - I also used a few apps to create more texture (iColorama, Glaze).