Melody Fuestel
Somewhere in Between
It's all gray.
Blinding white covering the bright colors I believe are above my head.
I've heard of the red below, dark and concealed,
Never seen it, but yet somehow I know it.
Looking away, I take a step forward.
Nothing changes.
I no longer feel the tepid breath of Death on my neck.
Paths with trees and flowers lining either side.
Their leaves and petals no longer made of greens and purples or yellows.
As I walk further in, they seem to curve and shield the light from above.
Drained of all life like all of the people who walk between them,
Including me.
Above my head the sky splits, cut by a blade.
The sudden white forces me to look away.
The bitter chill that filled the forest turns humid until the breach closes.
Then it's just cold.
Looking up, I think back to the weapon used on the dull gray sky,
A scythe with a long curved blade, the light reflects off of it,
Blinding me with its glare.
The weapon only wielded by Death herself.
Death was young when she put her temperate hand on my heart to stop it.
Around nearly as long as Life, but resembling someone as young as myself.
I look down at the shallow, murky pool to my right.
Where there would be a vibrant, pink lotus,
There are only petals of gray.
Once this flower was a symbol of my own rebirth.
Now just a block on a tower of false speculations that I've built for too many years.
Just now it is becoming tall enough to jump and end this walk.
And what wouldn't I give to fall from so far up?
To forget about the red below and the pastels above,
But I would wake here again.
So I look up,
Trying to search through the blinding white
To attempt to see the glorious colors from before.
But I just sink further,
Into the grays.
Belladonna
The birds were silent
The swings where the kids play were noiseless,
With the force of their feet kicking them away from the ground.
My breathing is absent.
I would have dismissed the park,
If it would only breathe.
My chest stops rising along with it.
My eyes have not blinked for a long time.
I cannot tell if my eyes are open,
Since everything is black.
My mouth is a desert so dry
That cacti gasp for water,
Yet I don’t feel the sandy rawness in my throat.
My ears not knowing noise.
They seem to forget how the kids cheered.
They forget the tapping of feet on cement.
And how the birds chirped in the early morning hours.
Camellia
You are a flame in my heart.
Set ablaze by your own frailty,
You shattered like a mirror in the heat.
Bring tears to my eyes.
Diminish the flames.
Yet they burn brighter with every thought
Of what we had been
Fingers intertwined,
But slipping apart with clammy palms.
The buckets of tears fail to put them out
Or dim the flames that you put in my heart.
Nasturtium
blood, bruises, breaks
men and women twitching through
their last moments
or lying still
in lines and in piles
surrounded by wilted grass,
that was once as bright
as the warrior’s eyes
but through bloodshed,
one stands alone
adorned in glistening armor,
setting down his stained sword,
and falling to his knees,
just as bloody and beaten
as his dead brethren on the field.
-Melody Feustel is a Senior at HHS
