The penguin gazed at the rolling dark clouds
lightly powdering the earth with plump cotton balls.
Gray fluffs abandoned the warmth of bodies
to greet graceful flurries in the crisp air.
The penguin’s midnight eyes became murky with envy –
he will never be as free as the flakes in the breeze.
In distress he cried out,
“Sanity is swallowing my spirit –
soon I’ll stare with vacant eyes,
into a black and white crowd, and think –
they’re just hollow mirrors of me.”
Agony weighed down on his frosted shoulders,
as he waited for squawking clusters of hunger
to form a uniform mass of waddling bodies,
excited to feast in the deep.
On a white weathered cliff the penguin stood,
a mist of sirens sung below to the crescendo of his curiosity.
He leapt into the desolate blue and found her –
the lonely secret of the deep, muttering regret.
Before she faded into the abyss
he heard her faintly say,
“I was naïve and sought my uniqueness–
I paid for a life in chains of solitude;
that is the cost of individualistic identity.”
The defeated penguin swam back.
He joined the others in apathetic unity.
∞
Victoria England graduated Texas Tech with a BA in Creative Writing and Psychology and has two published short stories. At eight, she slept in a campsite bathroom with a bullfrog to survive a tornado. Victoria is an overflowing junk folder parading around as a Type-A personality, so don’t be fooled by her obsessive list making.
Follow Victoria on Instagram: @torijane236
