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A Question of Peace
I can hear the crickets chirping
A lone red jalopy crawls like a tortoise along the faded blue highway
The uneven hum of the engine ringing in my ears long after
the tortured car moves beyond my realm of vision
So this is peace—
I can feel the autumn breeze
cooling and comforting my vulnerable soul
The wounded breeze, longing for power,
trying desperately to graduate into a wind
But, like life, it falls just short
The trembling tops of the half baked trees
foreshadow what will become of me,
as I leave this barren hill…
I can see a cricket staring at me
a black onyx of priceless worth
because it is worthy—of life
Frantically waving its antennae
and curling its emaciated wings of brown,
it stumbles and waddles away
as I prick it with the tip of my cheap ball-point pen
The one with the ink too light to be blue
And too dark to be anything but
I can feel his fear
as he stares up at my sullen face, my coarse countenance
the cricket, like me, wants to be free
"But he is free already," I say
He has no ball-point pen;
I can hear the American flag
and cloth flapping parallel to the thirteen colonies
and perpendicular to the fifty states
A symbol of unity, of freedom, here today
while tomorrow a symbol of greed, power, and destruction
I can see the wrinkles in my thirsty hands
so rough and dry that the Sea of Tranquility could not soften them
My weathered hands, kneading the storm
watering my soul, with nothing to show but scars of defeat
Hope is a meandering butterfly
yellow in color, black in design, vermillion at heart
A demon of delicacy, fluttering around my head
aimlessly exposing the past
What used to be
And what could have been
If the faded blue highway did not exist
And the crickets chirped to the rhythm of the wind, not an engine
-By Emma Demastrie
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