More Than Meets The Eye

• Aaliyah Trevethan, Grade 7B
• Poetry
• 2017

Days, months and years passed as she continued her daily performance for her blind crowd,
She disguised her broken heart and crumbling soul with a fake smile and forced laugh,
All her classmates had lively personalities and joyful stories of their past they told loud,
However, of her childhood she would not share with anyone even a single photograph.

The bruises and scar under her left eye only told half of her tale,
Behind closed doors she suffered hit after hit from her abusive Dad,
To blanket the reality, she lied to teachers saying that she had walked into the metal stair rail,
Meanwhile, sitting in the corner silently was her petrified mother timid and deaf.

In the hot summer evenings, she dared not take off her jacket,
For the marks underneath were the first signs of something much more serious than a bad day,
From day to day she tortured herself with self-criticism and doubt combined in a packet,
Of laughter and happiness, she blocked any of its kind that came her way.

For all these emotions came too much stress,
She couldn’t handle the daily struggle of life’s high expectation,
And her heart told her nothing but her future was a mess,
She ended her own misery, leaving everyone else in a state of depression.