The Prison Ship - Part 1

The marina throbbed with life. Yachts that shone as if champagne and sunlight poured over them. In one silent corner, among the glare of luxury, there she stood - the Ship.

Not a yacht. A ship.

Not shiny. Not new.

She didn't shine - she was falling apart.

Her paint peeled like skin after a bad sunburn, and her sails had long been taken down. Or maybe stolen. It didn't matter.

She wasn't vanishing. She wasn't surrendering entirely. She stood there, rooted in the ground - like a gravestone.

The past held her. The present denied her. Her hull was slowly decaying, as if nature itself were trying to take her back.

In front of her stood a wheelchair, like an eerie prop from a film. Thrown aside - like the final line of a play no one wanted to watch. The windows were dark and dull - like eyes that once saw light but no longer recognized it. Those eyes - once witnesses to the freedom of waves and wind - now saw only the rubbish bins and the chair.

When the sails have gone, what remains? Nothing more than cold metal - stripped of purpose, stripped of meaning.

The people in the marina didn't notice her. Or pretended not to. She was there, but not for them. Like running into an old acquaintance on the street after a long illness - you glance, recognize, and immediately look away. Out of fear. Fear that it might be waiting for you too.

And yet, there was a kind of stubbornness in that ship. She wasn't giving up. Her ruin was grand - almost theatrical.

And the chair? It wasn't just a wheelchair. It was the end of the line. When the body betrays you - freedom slips away and dreams remain without a path.

The symmetry was flawless - a final frame from life:

a closed door,

missed chances,

and rubbish.

T