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Grade
9

Moments. Years. Laughter. 

All meaningful and meaningless words, left unspared as the merciless departure of life looms on. 

“Honey, I’m sorry. Your friend who has cancer-” 

My head hurts, my soul hurts, 

“...the doctors made a mistake, she died just last night” 

She finished her sentence, unaware and heedless to my inner turmoil that is begging, pleading, shouting for her to stop, just stop.

I did not want to know.

After all, things were just so much better if they were left untold.

Ignorance is bliss, they say.

And bliss is something we all need, sometimes.

 

I can still picture her poise, her grace internally and physically, 

her natural confidence that drew people in. 

She always had been surrounded by people, 

Said she couldn’t stand the emptiness of being alone. 

Alone. Alone to face her fears? Her worries? 

She hadn’t had anything to fear or worry about. It was elementary school for goodness sake. 

Too early. 

Much too early

We all failed her, didn’t we?

Failed because in the moments when she was left all alone,

She became no more.

 

The chorus concert came a month later

We sang Count On Me, for her,

Until tears overflew and we could sing no longer

Because she counted on us and it was all that we could do to treasure her memory.

 

But cancer seems so inevitable,

So darn irritable and selfish and overwhelmingly headstrong

We are just chess pieces in the game of life, aren’t we

And we plead for mercy, no more, no more,

But more pieces are knocked over, down, d o w n 

 

Not a year later, another one leaves.

Death, it seems, is ever more ruthless when it battles the strongest people.

 

I hadn’t liked her very much at first. 

She had taken my bracelet away,

Said it was distracting me in class.

I hated her for it.

What right did she have,

To judge whether or not I was being distracted in class

And yet perhaps she was right, my teacher, that is

Within a month, 

She understood me and I, 

She came to my Carnegie Hall concert,

Sitting at the front row, with her young sons, (oh god they had been so young, and she as well)

Beaming, clapping, right in front of me and my piano.

 

In her life, it was all about explosions

She loved to spin tales about a frightening hornet,

A terrible monster threatening to sting and fight her mind and heart

And we would all listen, entranced

As far as my memory reaches, I’ve been

obsessed with noise&fire&laughter

Her stories, needless to say, had never been disappointing.

and it was everything,

noisy, lively, filled with laughter, in her class.

She told jokes, weaved stories.

Anything.

as long as everyone was laughing.

 

Ironically and improbably, 

cancer took her the same way as it had claimed my friend,

Silent. On a hospital bed.

A l o n e

 

Alone and yet 

not alone because,

because these memories, 

these brilliant sparks of something bigger, something brighter than death,

They can’t be destroyed,

Not when the sturdiness in our minds and stubborn hearts within us remain strong.

And we all remember.

We all pray and cry and laugh and remember

Because people like them,

They don’t disappear,

They glow

Forever in our souls

 

“Honey, what are you carrying?”

Mom smiles at me, as I stumble with an armful of book out of the library,

The Anatomy of Hope