Westward lives a boy, blistered and blue as the sea. He sailed through the heights of life with a storm's cloud overhead--oh so turbulent were the waters--but he had the hope of a prophet and the patience of a saint to guide him through shipwreck when the hull was battered by calamity.

With his funny, fickle features, he ventured toward a belly of treasure that they'd called good fortune, craning his flimsy neck to peer over a map too blurry to read. And they called him selfish for wanting but like a chestnut he savored every last dreg he was provided on this vast journey, because he saw the world in color for what we'd stoop to see normalcy, as appreciation is a gift when mudanity is not seen as a vice. How gracious he was, how little he prattled, and yet he was met with scorn and second-hand sympathies.

Still, a captain cannot complete his mission without the ability to prevail, so he sucked in his stomach and fashioned his sorrows around his hip like a ribbon and wore it in style. The breezes tempted to knock his ribbon and his resolve away from him, but as he passed figments of memories on his journey, he thought what a tragedy that would be and swallowed the ribbon so he'd never forget his character.

And what a good boy he'd been, what a model of determination, what a picture of morality, and yet they teased.

"What a crooked smile you sport, blistered fellow!" the pirates bellowed. He covered his ears to drown the cries, but could not stifle nor muffle his own thoughts that had begun to adapt the voices of his peers.

So caught up in the turbulence, he had neglected to man his ship, had pushed back his voyage by years, perhaps. So distraught he was, he forgets himself in the trip to better lands. Oh, but the pirates still throw stones, and they hit him like daggers, claw at his face, belittle his bones, and he cannot bear to feel it anymore.

Out comes the ribbon in a puddle of red vomit. He fumbles for the fabric and wraps it tightly around his hideous features, blanketting the blow he believed his ugliness to be. They could not see his funny face behind the ribbon, and they could not see his tears. However, now his character was only one of cowardice, put on the defense. One cannot finish a voyage without the strive for oneself, so he turned his little sailboat around and found resevoir in hedges of coral. For the first time, he could not see the beauty.

It was not the cracked plates, nor the bitten words, but the amplitude of loneliness that left him perpetually bitter. How the blue of sorrow had turned to the scarlet of vigor, how the calloused hands and the contentious parentage of his youth, how the taunting taintedness of his companions had torn apart the spirited young fellow and sculpted one modeled in taint and irritability.

Oh, what words do to one who can understand them. They spat in his face, and wondered why he is angry, but not once was he offered a hand. He would not always have bitten it; there is always a time where the most cruel of us would accept an embrace.