The Exit Home

• Nicola Hughson, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2014

A nascent sense of happiness
so promising, so light
warms to an orange hue
with the fall of night.
My heart is pieced together
red as ever, crimson beat
thick veins run like motorways
traffic jams, exhausting heat.
Robotic trees control us
cat's eyes, they never blink
a piercing green power
indelible, like ink.
Crowded in my office
where milk-greys fill the space
a cloud crushed inside a box
teal droplets of disgrace.
Escaping awful tedium,
deadlines and mistakes
to shelves of purple secrets;
the dreams they cannot take.