By: Abigail Harris
I see you amongst fluffy lace and flowers
Eyelids shut and lips closed
Your hair is as curly as it is in the photos
But they got your skin tone wrong
You’re much darker than you should be
Oranger
Like someone tried to take the pale out of your face
You’re surrounded by people
There is talking, chuckles, maybe a laugh
And mumbles, whimpers, and the occasional sob
It’s not too serious, the collages have small stickers of Avengers characters
But you only see them if you stare at it for a while
There is a portrait of you as hulk
But this is solemn, so Chris-Hulk is made of flowers
The pictures from a plain, impactful slideshow remind me of my own family
Pictures of eating ice cream messily
Grinning at some family reunion with a great view behind them
Lots of smiling and laughing
He has a large space between his front two teeth, like me
But he is more similar to my brother, with wide, adorable smiles and big brown eyes
I see his mother giving out more support than she is taking in
Even though she’s the one who needs support
She reminds me of my mother
Always a social butterfly, there for anyone to lean on
The similarities should encourage me to sympathize more with the family
And it does
But it also scares me
Many times I could be in Chris’s shoes, or my brother
The only difference between the two families seems unimportant, until it is
Poor Chris
Losing everything over something so trivial
Not knowing how
To swim.
I am really intrigued by your line, "The only difference between the two families seems unimportant, until it is."
ReplyDeletepowerful ending- which lead me back to the beginning for a second read to reveal more. I like be encouraged by the poem to go back and get more from it.
ReplyDeleteHi Abigail;
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed your piece and I would like to know more about what inspired you to write this piece. I too was particularly moved by the sentence;"The only difference between the two families seems unimportant until it is". Great work .Please keep writing!
Very well written. I read it once and had to go back and read it again. You tell the story and then hit a home run with the last line. Keep writing and I promise to keep reading. You have a fan now.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned during descriptive review, I love that this starts off by describing someone's physical attributes, which is a classic feature of love poems. But you turn that trope on its head because the twist is that it's not a poem about happiness, but about tragedy. So powerful. The last couple lines hit so hard and make everything so heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteWhat more can I say? I agree with all of the other comments. You have captured the wide range of emotions and questions that surround loss and tragedy, but I still came away hopeful. There are so many great lines, but the one that hit me was "I see his mother giving out more support than she is taking in". Beautiful.
ReplyDelete