The Missive

Creepy Little Poem #55

Once upon the bleakest eve,

while silently I sat and grieved,

the wind blew from the ocean like a howling hungry beast,

and I leaned upon the window sill and gazed towards the east.

The fall had turned to winter and the birds had flown away,

trading dim and dreary fields for warm and sunny days.

I had prayed my letters reach you in some port across the seas,

pieces of my heart imploring you to soon return to me.

In vain were my letters sent, a flock of birds to distant shores,

Never to return again, gone forevermore.

Late one night set alight with streaks across the sky

a missive was delivered without a kindly warning,

disturbing quiet reverie while I sat alone and brooding.

A footman of a dour face standing at my door,

his countenance disheveled and affronted by the storm,

rang the bell impatiently and I sprang across the floor.

He declined an invitation to have a cup of tea

as if such an act would be seen as impropriety.

I felt a stirring fear, and then began to wonder,

what dire news of import could send this emissary

like a messenger from Hades into whipping rain and thunder.

As he withdrew a letter from deep inside his coat,

there blew a vicious gust and rain spat into the wind,

throwing spots onto the parchment that held my hopes within.

I paid the footman coin for his troubles and his worries

but felt the presence of the underworld

and the shadow of its ferry.

Hope and dread swirled about and I thought of all the days,

I sat beside the window where I wrote to you and prayed

to bring you safely home again across the tempest seas,

to hold you in my arms once more

forevermore with me.

Fate could be unkind I knew,

without mercy and compassion,

and as I loosed the seal, filled with apprehension,

the omens of the night filled the air with heavy warnings,

beating at my lonely door,

hours before the dawning,

beating against my fearful heart,

too long before the morning.

The letter of your death,

cruel mortuary missive

announced your ship had perished, lost on the open seas

taking you forevermore to depths I cannot reach.

Hopes of golden fortunes all had come to naught,

and my mind began to wander paths insensible and dark.

What beasts had dined upon thy form at the table of the seas?

Your morbid fate is my demise, and yet this cannot be.

I will set the shrouded wreath blackly at my door,

enfold all the mirrors and my face with mourning veils

while at the service of the holy church all will hear me wail.

But what they do not know is that which we hold dear,

the divide between this world of shadow and the next is very near.

I will fly into the dawn far across the sea

and keep you on the farther shore

forevermore with me.

Author’s Note:

I wrote this poem in response to a challenge to write something inspired by the most famous line in Gothic poetry, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,…” from The Raven written by Edgar Allen Poe, who really needs no introduction. It was a fun challenge, to see if I could write something in the Gothic vein that flowed, at least partly, in the rhythm of The Raven, yet keep close to the spiritualist belief in the afterlife prevalent in the later half of the 1800’s. Hopefully I was able to keep that same cheerful Gothic vibe.

Photos by Büşra Akkaya and lalesh aldarwish