Just Standing There

• Maya Steitieh, Grade 8
• Poetry
• 2014

Just standing there,
Looking down in the perfectly rectangular hole in the ground,
Goosebumps ran down my spine,
My eyes burned,
I could feel them swelling up,
I could feel them turning red,
Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes,
Every time I tried to swallow back my tears it felt like I was taking a huge gulp of poison scarping down the sides of my throat,
I bit my tongue trying to stop myself from crying,
But I think I bit too hard because the taste of blood stained in my mouth.
I tried pinching the inside of my palm but that didn’t work either.
I just couldn’t handle it anymore.
The gulp was growing bigger in my throat by the second,
It kept on growing till I eventually couldn’t breathe
And that was it…
I allowed the first teardrop to slide down my face
But I couldn’t control the rest.
They just kept falling out teardrop after teardrop.
My emotions were bottled up for so long I think it actually felt good to cry.
I tried to control myself,
Pick up the pieces of my already broken heart and try to mend it once again,
But it was too late,
I had already given in to crying and I knew that a heart was as fragile as glass,
you can try and fix it, but there would still be cracks that couldn’t be filled.
So there I stood,
Bawling my eyes out looking into some hole,
Where soon someone’s corps were to lay there rotting and eventually de-compose.
And so there I stood.
In the middle of a half abandoned grave yard.
Watching them lower her into her grave,
And for once I was allowed to cry
And I didn’t try to stop myself.