Just Because

• Jasmine Walker, Grade 8
• Poetry
• 2010

Genevienia crawled, the dirt scraping at her bare knees, through the clay stuck tunnel passageway. She would never truly understand what had possessed her to crawl trough this tunnel until time itself had began to unravel. She had left home searching for her brother, and was going in entirely the wrong direction .Her knees were covered in muck and she smelt like the neighbours pig. But now all thoughts of home had vanished. She had discovered an adventure, an Alice in Wonderland adventure. Or so she had thought. That was earlier, hours earlier. Now she ached from head to toe and her legs had numbed in pain. But she kept on, one step at a time, maybe it was because she couldn’t go back or maybe it was just because. Because all children do things for just because. She had no idea what to do and was crawling forward for just because. Which probably wasn’t such a good idea. The top layer of soil felt as if it was getting lower by the second. Her breath was tight and was dragging her already torn and mud-packed petticoat across the soft clay. She was going to die. At just 11 years old, Genevienia Blossom was going to die. No one would ever find her body because Genevienia was somewhere that only existed in her mind. A place everyone else saw as a ditch, nothingness. And then she saw it. Through the pitch-black tunnel and through the pungent aroma of rotting vegetables, she saw it, she felt it. She knew something or someone was there. The memory she had always remembered but never actually seen. Her mother. She felt her, right in front of her. The last photograph. It was just sitting there inches away from her, she could not see the picture, but she could feel it. Even after 4 long years of being torn away from her mother, she still recognised the beautiful face shining through. Even in the almost pitch black air, she saw the painfully familiar curves of her face, she knew they were there… somehow. Half burnt and moth-eaten, the photograph almost fell to crumbs at her fingertips but Genevienia didn’t care. Her mother, the figure she had been told about, the on she barely remembered, the one who had cared so much for her, the one she never remembered. She had never really remembered her, or maybe she just didn’t want to remember her, maybe something inside her pushed the memory away. Even though she had been already seven years old when here mother had passed, it was painful and the memories had faded too much to recognise. But now with this new light, every moment she had ever spent with her mother came flooding back. Her touch, her smell, her voice. Then the last , memory of her appeared, a stinging memory that she had vowed never to think of again came painfully back. Gen was caught unaware and found herself weeping consistently all over the torn photograph. She heard the shot, the cry, she felt it. She had to watch her suffer. Suddenly Gen remembered where she was, in a dark hole that was with every minute, being drained of the precious air it had. Gen immediately started crawling and the rush of emotions she had just felt gave her new strength and she pushed on till she could push on no more.