Worlds Left Behind | Teen Ink

Worlds Left Behind

January 9, 2011
By sweeto SILVER, Boulder Creek, California
sweeto SILVER, Boulder Creek, California
6 articles 0 photos 0 comments

If I were a sailor, I do believe
Days, I might write love letters to my crew,
And lay down drunk nights, read them to the sea
As sleep of sleeps untied my boots, soaked through.
I should think I would sport a handsome stare
And cut my hair down to the very scalp
So men would sail the course I charted there
While drifting women wait lips in, hips out.
Clear weather and I’d turn into pure light
Too bright for mornings spent safe, in cover
Weighed down by anchors, this imagined life
Past oceans soaked with love letters, and over
A thousand dreams of worlds left behind
If I were a sailor, broken and blind.

The author's comments:
I wrote this piece for my 12th grade Modern Literature class. We were assigned to write a sonnet, and our teacher told us that almost all sonnets are written about either love or death. I wanted to write one about neither. So my sonnet is about my imagined life as a sailor. It is the first and only formal sonnet I have ever written.

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