The ship has set sail into an ocean, black and calm.
Just this morning, you got the letter from your mother,
Handwritten in felt tip, slightly stained with a tear,
Telling you to keep warm and stay safe,
To fill your stomach and fill you pockets.

As your sister stands on Dublin's docks to see you off
and wish you well.
She shrinks with the distance growing between you and her, and
She looks twelve and three quarter years younger than she is today,
The little girl who you fought with all the live long day over nothing.
Now, she's the women who put up a fight over your sailing away.
Sometimes, brothers and sisters never change.

She knows that this is for the best,
but she would never admit that,
Not with words,
She feels her words, weightless; would just sail right away with you.
You wonder what she will look like if you see her again,
Will she have received wrinkles from worrying about mother?
Will her chestnut hair have turned white as the snow burying her bare feet?
As she thinks that you can no longer see her,
she's succumbing to the cold,
She starts into her coughing fit,
you watch with desperate despair

On the Eastbound coffin ship.

-Jamie F. Nugent