Pain

• Zoe Singer, Grade 8
• Poetry
• 2015

Why is it there? It feels like a fire deep inside of me trying to pull me in and make me feel all the guilt I've ever felt and never let me go. They say without pain you would never feel happiness, but when I can't escape the fire surrounding me and burning me from the inside, where is the happiness throwing me a bucket of water and using everything it can to drag me out? When I know deep inside that it's my fault even though everyone who speaks with no truth and emptiness tells me that it's not. When the only person who could possibly tell me that it's not my fault is the one who is blaming every last bit on me. Is it worth it? It's as though I want this angry flaming fire to just consume me and stop giving me time trying to fight my way out. I want it to swallow me whole and have a dark numbness fill me. I don't want to endure the sadness, the anger and the never ending guilt. The fire that makes me question everything I have ever done wrong, the fire making me see every little thing I've ever done wrong stacked up in a perfect pile that looks so inviting that all I want to do is sit and look at it, but as soon as I realize the mistake I've made I can't stop. I can't stop staring at everything I've ever done wrong because I want to be sure. I want to be sure of what I have done. This deadly fire is consuming me at an impossibly slow pace when I see the bright light of happiness. The bright shimmering light has a bucket of water in its hands, just too far for me to reach, but I'm still able to see it. Wondering why on earth the light of happiness is just standing there still, with a bucket of water and a rope, not throwing it to me. But as I watch the light of the happiness grow darker, and I watch confused as the light of happiness drops the water and rope and jumps into the fire, slowly burning, that is when I realise that the happiness is me. The light with the bucket of water was me. But I couldn't put the fire out because I didn't know how. And just as I made the connection in my head, the fire swallowed me, filling me with the numbness I no longer wanted. And I just continued burning. Burning until there was nothing left but a pile of smoking ashes.