A/N: Challenges:

Mega Prompts Challenge, word prompt #83 - deeply
Freeverse Poetry Boot Camp, #020 – amuck
The Scrabble Challenge, "lid"


Closed Box

There was a throttling air about that island:
something heavy, something coal.

They'd be coughing out their lungs
soon enough, trapped in that coffin,
locked in that box, pounding at the lid
that had been hammered shut with nails
before they'd even known. Already rusted
but they'd wandered in anyway, unaware
and now they were trapped,

Suffocating in that stifling air, with the sea
in arm's reach and yet so far away.
If only the storm hadn't locked them in
but it was their fate, to be locked in
as such, to die gasping for air
that would take too long to find,
starving, jumping upon each other
as though they'd live a little longer
if they were gone…

But it was a closed box and no escape.
Perhaps not even for the ghost that had wandered in.