ELTHAM HIGH SCHOOL ANTHOLOGY
Alsop Lane
Emily Brennan 2019
Creative response to The Arrival
Going, going, going, gone. I stare back at my homeland the tiny island that I had once called home as a trickle of tears run down my cheeks and I turn my head away from the scene and my mind onto my new life. The boat rocks violently, as though trying to upend us all. The rugged waves were calling for our lives, and there in the shadows waiting to catch his next victim is death himself with a heart as black as the sky above about to snatch life from innumerable innocent people. I draw my thoughts away from that dreaded prospects and on to the journey ahead babies cry, parents hold bouncy kids on laps and I think of how many of them will never see the land of dreams that awaits in the unknown. Many deaths will occur on this dreaded voyage, before being tossed unceremoniously into the ever ranging anger of the waves. As though a bottle containing a desperate plea for help floating calmly before drifting astray. Before landing in the storm and being swept beneath the surface never to be heard from again. The land of dreams suddenly seems so overrated and worthless since so many people will never set a foot onto its magical soil. I wonder if that will be me condemned to the brutal prospect of burial at sea. The reaching noises from behind me followed the warm wet sickly feeling of vomit soaking my shoes tells me that this is going to be a long ride.