Isolated

• Aleena Mathew, Grade 8, Chisholm Catholic College
• Poetry
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

Voices floating in my head,
I was cornered, left behind, alone,
Nowhere to turn,
The internet told me to tell an adult,
Various adults told me to ignore them, to act as if they weren’t there,
But that hurt me even more than ever,
The dictatorship ruled over my body,
Safe was no longer a word in my vocabulary,
Outsiders watching me from behind their glass, the glass that divides them from me,
Sleeping in fear of waking, waking up to a nightmare.
The chamber that was my school, pushing my eyes towards the floor,
Rushing home as shadows but my own travelled behind me,
Awake and alive but unconscious and deceased inside,
Breathe in, breathe out
I hear a click,
My screen turns black.