Corinne

17

A Summer Awakening
I find myself drifting off in the romantic summer heat.
My hair alights on a tender breeze, then drifts softly to my back.
The grass tickles my chin and arms; it's crisp scent clears my soul.
This vibrancy, this life- a perfect day.
What beauty abounds in this world of mine!
A comfort in the flowing fields, a security in the wooded cricks.
This is life without a care.
This is glorious.
I gaze upon an endless, open sanctuary, and my eyes grow heavy.
I follow the clouds beyond the edge of my world.
We drift along in the heat.
But there, they've gone! And where have they left me?
The sun shines in a different sky, upon an unwelcoming earthen home.
What is that nightmare?
A child cowers, cloaked in rags.
A mother cries, prays, screams into the unforgiving heat. And that sun. Oh that sun!
Were it but the soothing hand I felt in the safety of home!
Gunshots. Uniforms. Bodies.
How can this be?
My paradise seems so wrong, so wrong, so hateful.
We stand for this injustice?
The peace of my home is not to be found here.
My peace has never been felt here.
Such hate! Such violence!
I must do something!
Something seizes me.
I am ripped from my haze, but the images are burned into my consciousness.
These images, so real, so vivid.
The afternoon heat bites into my skin. The blue sky reflects the angry sun, blinding me.
The clouds escape the rushing, raging, stifling summer.
It is time to return to school.
Then I'm on my way to changing the world.