The Emigrant's Suitcase
By RuairĂ Elms-Harrison, 2nd Year
As I stand on the pier, icy air.
Salt spray, sleet, stings my face.
I look to the sea and there,
My future is ahead of me.
–
Battling the tendrils of the abyss
HMS Valkyrie
Surging through the icy darkness
To port. To me.
–
I brace, water surging all around
Mighty waves clash with steel.
As my heart races,
I glimpse sunlight
And know we have arrived.
–
But to no land or safe harbour
It is the sea we came for,
Or what lies beneath
This heaving swell.
–
We ready the sub, anticipation.
Plunging the depths, excitement turns to terror
There! A behemoth, the unsinkable.
Titanic.
–
Beauty, magnificence, sorrow.
A briny grave, a place of screams
Listen. See.
See there, something calling softly.
–
No Davy Jones locker, but a humble suitcase
Carrying dark secrets, treasure?
A robotic arm explores, gently, gently
No! I cry, as it dissolves into wet ash.
–
Not treasure revealed but ghosts…
Floating towards me, a photograph.
A young man cradling a baby girl
And a young woman, smiling.
–
Delicate like the suitcase, fragile,
Soluble. Wait! A fragment gently rests
On glass, words materialise through gloom
The dead do speak.
–
My sweetest Annabelle, I am truly sorry
To have missed your first birthday.
Daddy is nearly home, only a little while longer
Yours forever, Finn O’Hara, your loving father.
–
For months I have been searching,
Coming up to a year. Yet, here I stand
In front of this small cottage door,
What to say, how to act?
–
An auburn-haired boy shouts for his mum
What can I do for you? Silence fills me
I stutter with fear
Is Annabelle here?
–
Her sadness fills the misty air
Come through. A shrivelled old lady
In a bed of cotton,
Familiar soft blue eyes.
–
Silence takes me. Annabelle
Looks straight through me
I’ve something for you
A scribbled note.
–
She stares, reads, tears on soft cheeks.
Am I in heaven? Are you an angel?
I’m a messenger
And he loved you.
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