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Hostage to Fortune
Written: September 09, 2025, for contest by Edward Ebah
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She was born beneath a waning moon,
a beautuous whisper in the tohubohu—
intertwined with chaos,
yet lithe as a zeugma in a poet’s breath.
Her name lost to the fog of forgetfulness,
her kismet sealed in a miraculous pact
with Fortune’s flexible fist.
The stars, agog, offered a panoply:
a pavonine tapestry of beauty and danger
a palimpsest of pulchritude and peril.
She danced through the swarm of youth,
filled with forgetfulness,
her lungs a stertorous hymn to breathing,
her heart a riparian ravel of love and myth.
Fortune, affable yet fiendish,
bestowed a dubious crown—
spurious laurels woven from flapdoodle and fard.
The world, a compilation of excessive praise,
sang stories in hackneyed tongues,
while she, a rebel of her own ilk,
resiled from the solace of admiration.
She grasped the gadzookery of glorification,
It's tarantism of desire
It's ischemic hush beneath the applause.
Each accolade is a hollow victory,
each smile a jussive mask
in the penumbra of reality.
Then came the cacophony years—
dyspnea in the soul,
ergophobia in the bones.
She wandered the maelstrom of memory,
a collector of regrets,
her dreams tinged with blood,
Her mornings are packed with petrichor and paucity.
Fear clung to her like fard,
a superstition woven into her identity.
She improvised hope,
but the light grew dim.
Even meliorism, that mellifluous myth,
felt like flapdoodle on the horizon.
Yet still, a spark remained—
a zoetic pulse beneath the shadows.
She started to create new stories,
flexible as a pavonine breeze,
slender as a summary of sorrow.
She found coolness in strangers,
Love in the ductile moments,
and in the petrichor of failure,
a panacea of purpose.
Now she sits beneath an ancient tree,
in harmony with the wind,
her story a palimpsest of ransom and release.
Fortune, that impetuous nemesis,
no longer holds her hostage—
but dances, melodious and mellifluous,
in the ripple of her breath.
She is not free,
But she is no longer bound.
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