Anon-Poetry- Cold

It is cold. The patrol boat prowls, pushing froth, forcing the sea away as she makes her way.

She prowls, twin diesels coughing, muffled, as the snow begins to fall over the South China Sea. The waters are choked with broken ice, colliding with the hull, embracing the hull, then sloughed off by the wash of the jets.

It is cold. February is a cold month.

My body recoils from the winds, the snow now punching in. I am filthy, my camouflage uniform greasy with petroleum, with fuel, with sweat and angst.

I am wearing inadequate gloves. I am wearing 4 layers, but my hands are unadorned, unable to make rifle slung before me bark.

A wake. No warning, a wake rushing beneath the rim of my binoculars, colliding into my boat, tearing her in two.

No time for our guns to respond. The back of our boat, broken.

I am too tired to care. I have been here too long. I have been on Earth too long.

Cold. The cold seas embrace me.

I embrace my rifle. I hold it close with frozen, directionless hands. My binoculars drift away, floating for a moment, then sinking, devoured.

The worst cold engulfs me, I sink, I hold my rifle close.

I exhale. The bubbles rise. I sink, compressed, breathless, I am dying and I am sinking.

The craft is lost.

I cannot see my crew, I am too distracted with my own death.

A torpedo from the North ended our patrol.

All hands were lost.