Today’s prompt for Intro to Poetry is journey. As an extra feature, include a simile. 

Struggling…struggling… Maybe this will work. (By the way, this is not autobiographical.)

A Journey Damaged

The flight to the isle of St. Martin

was like a long ride in a carton

from FedEx delivery service

to a place that was making me nervous.

He left no room for discussion.

A different job? No, not an option.

He wanted prestige in his old age,

didn’t care that, to me, this cage

left me without any job choice,

destroyed any freedom and real voice

in this wicked old sham of a marriage

without a good car–or a carriage!

Two decades that I can remember

flew past as a leaf in September.

No choices to life are allowed me;

his close-minded stubbornness stymie

all chance at examining courses

of action, as though they were horses

at auction for “minimum bid” price.

A chance to discuss–it would be nice.

But discussion to him is a lecture

with no questions, but maybe conjecture.

The decision is his, in his thinking.

And I am too old to be sinking

into a life all alone now,

with no one to care or ask me how

I ever got into this marriage

with barely a car or a carriage

(he can’t drive!). I am his chauffeur .

But now I have made him my go-fer.

My mind once was keen and decisive.

Today it is fearful, submissive,

a state that my father would hate if

he knew, when he died, what I’d give

for freedom from shackles of my mind

that this man used to conquer my pride

and choices in life left to others.

If only I had any brothers

to help me regain my ambition–

to change my old fate and position

Of hating to be in this marriage

(without either car or damned carriage!).

For now my life’s journey is damaged.

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