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No Escape, No Return

Siren scales flake and burn

By K.B. Silver Published about 5 hours ago 1 min read
Top Story - March 2026
No Escape, No Return
Photo by ryan skjervem on Unsplash

I claw and scrape, sing and scream

A siren drying

Gasping in the noontime sun

The tune of captivity gradually fades

To a chant of liberation

☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻‍♀️🏖️*:・

Moisture is readily exchanged

With sizzling air, setting plumes of steam

Billowing from tail to hair

Slowly desiccating in

My scramble to escape

☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻‍♀️🏖️*:・

On flipper and elbow I must crawl

Salt crystallizes in sea green veins

As I wade into a merciless death

Despite all hope and fine polishing grit

☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻‍♀️🏖️*:・

Unable to fight the humorless gulls

Plucking scales off one by one

I toss them, glinting

In the firelight of futility

☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻‍♀️🏖️*:・

As the kittiwakes mock and taunt

Their laughing squawk

Uncannily mingles with

My tortured song

As the day dawns on this

Glistening mandala of harpy slaughter

Lines wrought of Iridescent flakes

A haunted shanty awash in spiraling melody

Pours across the shining shore

☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻‍♀️🏖️*:・

The tide constantly recedes

I never see the tree line

It continually creeps

Just out of sight, always out of reach

As I hobble on hand and fin

Towards the sanguine horizon

Tantalizing my sense of survival

Driven to persist in this fruitless Odyssey

☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻‍♀️🏖️*:・

My lifelong curse and castigation

To never reach the safety of

The calling sea

Never feel her aqueous caress

I hear her whispers

Her bewitching hymns

Yet I’ve been forced to survive

On just the rushing of the surf

The saline scent of oceanic brine

☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻‍♀️🏖️*:・

Predators may snap

The sun can scorch

I shall not die captive

Better I’d bake

Alone on the shore

K.B. Silver

Free Verseperformance poetrysurreal poetryStream of Consciousness

About the Creator

K.B. Silver

K.B. Silver has poems published in magazine Wishbone Words, and lit journals: Sheepshead Review, New Note Poetry, Twisted Vine, Avant Appa[achia, Plants and Poetry, recordings in Stanza Cannon, and pieces in Wingless Dreamer anthologies.

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Comments (1)

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  • Komalabout 4 hours ago

    This is intense in the best way!🔥What hits me most is the refusal. Even if freedom costs everything, captivity isn’t an option. That kind of stubborn, almost wild self-preservation feels very human.

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