A Flower Blooms

• Mieke Van Der Kooy, Grade 9
• Poetry
• 2015

Through the blinding sun and the deathly caressing snow, we shoot our bullets into the unknown.
Our smiles are thinning and our laughter, mere memories; yet we hold hopes of a future amidst fears of a running death.
Eyes are tarnished and bodies are death’s canvas.
We fight, unknowing the days which will come.
As our mates disappear, our hopes are yet dimming for we know the time will come when we wander through the skies, hand in hand with each other.
Our small protection of barricades is paper thin to the bullets which quest for the only living, breathing mortals in this grave.
This is not a burial on which a flower blooms, tainted with blood and forced to witness the suffering of our race.
This is a parade of darkness shadowed by light, in which a small bud will die like the young mortals we are.
Just as death is juggling with our hearts, occasionally bleeding out our last dependence on belief, we are shooting our rifles into the darkness with not even stars as our guide.
Each opening in the barrier is a portal to our desperation.
Within these dug out gutters, we are forced to hide.
Death may now be a release, a time of freedom where we abandon our problems and finally feel neutrality.