[Dresden]

I completely forgot. If ashes hadn't bumped it...

Still can't think of a title, I'll settle for this one.

Scuttle:

The mast of the ship sat half-across
the starboard deck of the broken vessel.
They scuttled the thing at the sandy cove
and watched as it half-sunk, into
the shallow water.

One man said, I've been on that ship
for so long, my whole life: when I was a brat
they pressed me aboard and whipped me till I stopped crying.

One man said, I got press-ganged
walking back home with a drink in my belly,
after work. Chained me up good and didn't let me free
till we were so far from port, I had to ply the sea.

And all this time

I have a wife waiting for me back home.
That was ten years back, though.
It'd be more true to say, I had one, rather than have.
Now no doubt she's got another man by her side
and her hearth is no longer my own. Sad, innit?
It's sad how it goes.

And one man said, at last, following the other two:
you lads think your lives a tragedy? I was a general, once:
an admiral and a knight and a noble and an earl.
But they said I was yellow, they did, when my ship caught fire
and I ordered us to turn back, to save my crew.
Should've died out there, they told me, to save my honor,
nevermind all the common boys working below decks
to swab the plugs and man the guns. So they tarred me
as a coward and here I am now, my ship gone.

They watched pieces of the ship
scatter away.

Hey, said one, as they watched,
at least we ain't dead.