Death Sentence

• Jacob Rizk, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2015

It penetrates my being and stabs my bulbous eyes
and tears, like the first from an antediluvian flood
whimper out, out to berate and chastise
the very act of their utterance, to dare open
before its might and wrath.
This room: I have seen it before, before from which
supposed knowledge bleeds from the walls in
inquisition, and O! – how I pray to Tyche
to end this suffering, to take the sharpest blade and
end it all, end it all, end it all with her gentle touch!
It haunts me a like a corporeal spirit –
like a man who runs on deathly envy,
who lingers in the living world like an incoherent
drunk that sways upon the sides of streets
as shadows follow a non-existent man.
And dread fills my veins as weariness beats me like waves upon beached stones