A/N: Written for the Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompts #70 – sestina poetry

The Gate-Feeder

The blood water laps at the sides
of the boat, and she goes rowing
on, deaf to the protests of her
passenger, and the gate ahead
with its open doors, to receive
another soul for its belly.

It was a black hole, its belly.
Lost souls could not touch any sides
but wandered lost, not to receive
any mercy. She's rowing
away, back to the world ahead
because that is the role for her.

It is the fate that awaits her.
The choice to avoid that belly
she ill-deserves, and so ahead
she sends others, but there's no sides.
Others ill-deserved, but rowing
ahead for the gate to receive.

Her freedom one day she'll receive
when the gate has its fill of her,
she can finally stop rowing,
someone else can fill its belly
and watch it scrape at its insides
and the fearful people ahead.

She needs to keep going ahead
so that she may one day receive
the freedom after losing sides
who once a time had stood by her
but then left her for the belly
that she brought to the gate, rowing.

That was her price, to keep rowing,
keep going back, and then ahead
and to keep filling that belly,
bring cursed souls for it to receive:
souls cursed by others, just like her
and no-one left to take their sides.

Blood and water touch the sides as she's rowing.
They splatter her and her passenger but she rows ahead
and takes another soul for the gate to receive into its belly.