I took a dip in the river.

They told me it would make me 

invulnerable,

invincible.

But they lied.

In fact I was accident prone.

Scrape after scrape,

fall after fall,

that was my experience

of living my life.

But I always survived

until now

when I’m standing

waiting for the ferryman

to take me across the river,

the same river, 

perhaps,

or maybe not

I forget.

Perhaps he’s already been 

and taken me to Lethe

by mistake.

I forget.

My memory doesn’t flow

as swiftly as it used to.

Perhaps it clogged

when he let me sink 

into the mud of the marshland

on another wrong turning 

perhaps I’ve already been eaten

by Cerberus 

by one of his mouths

in one of his heads

and spat out again.

So I’ll stand and wait

a little longer.

This time

I know

I must cross

and give up my soul

to eternity.

Photo by Hoach Le Dinh on Unsplash

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Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net,  and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Light Journal and So It Goes. Find Lynn at: Poetry – Lynn White and Facebook.