Costa Concordia: Fairytale With No Happily-Ever-After by Fizza Abbas

I was a luxury ship,

with pools, water slides and bars,

my sailors loved me,

they would often come to my deck,

to enjoy views of the island

until that ill-fated day

when they were running away from me.

I didn’t know what exactly happened,

I hit a hard surface, a rock or something solid

when a gash of water started to sink me,

I was unable to breathe properly

but nobody cared,

they boarded lifeboats and abandoned me.

I was all alone,

fighting the waves

in a vast, enormous sea

cried “mayday”, “mayday” multiple times

but nobody heard me.

they say it’s my captain’s fault

because he left me

nobody cared

for my safety

or for me,

I was shivering with cold,

to remain afloat

but all they remembered was,

32 people

who went down with me.

sometimes, I feel ‘’me’’ is a very insignificant pronoun,

perhaps made to lessen the importance of a being,

I was a being

unfortunately, not a human being.

Fizza Abbas is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her work has appeared in more than 90 journals, both online and in print. Her work has also been nominated for Best of The Net and shortlisted for Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021. She has also authored two books, Ool Jalool (Fahmidan Publishing) and Bakho (Ethel Press). Aside from writing, she runs a YouTube channel where she interviews poets and zine editors. She tweets @fizzawrites.