strong in will { petra }

District 12: a world of wonder, filled with people with hope that one day, they will see change. Tired of mining away the rocks to pick up the coal, bored of being starved of freedom, because all that we have behind every door and in between every particle of air: fear.

Fear: we live, sleep, eat, breathe, it yet somehow become immune to its consequences. A district hit so hard by President Snow and his men that the pain just trickles into our wounds; scars made stronger by the binding pain.

Fear: we watch as two unsuspecting individuals are snatched from us, snatched from the District who need them the most; to bring wealth to a family because they are that bloodlines last hope. And though the lines of crimson weave throughout one another, tying up to create a vow of love, a person's true loyalty lies with oneself.

Because we've turned from men to monsters under the watchful eye of Snow.

Monsters who crunch their fingers to cling onto the few possessions they have in hopes that one day it'll bring a pretty coin in The Hob. Exhaling substances blacker than our hearts - there's no way we can be human any more when the world can change in the blink of an eye.

When your world can change in the blink of an eye.

And though we live in the fear, immunity by our side, we still see a glimpse of the destruction it can cause. Bones creeping out though skin, throats swarmed by a drought which can only be cured by an ocean, innocence sucked out from skeletons annually. Innocence replaced by a chance, a belief struck by fear, only to be infected with eternal nothingness.

We escaped the reaping of the 70th games, this time, this once. Hunters chasing our tails for hours only to be disappointed when we slip through their fingers. And the first thought of it all makes you feel relieved. You can live and breathe and not have to worry.

The taste in your mouth becomes sweet: it's honey. Yet you eat the pot too quickly and it fades faster and faster and so the metallic taste of blood returns to your mouth which is too familiar for you to hate yet too bitter for you to love.

All things bound by light and content are met by sharp slaughter.

The 70th games have now ended, and creeping up behind us all is the ever-growing shadow of the 71st: games which aren't a quell. There's nothing special about them, and so we will have no way out.

You can see it in their faces: eyes drooping, smiles lowering into frowns and hope simply dancing out of lungs into the air. Though it never left us, fear seems to return strengthened by our laughter and carefree actions. It's eyes larger, to stare into the livelihoods of each and every one of us. It turns away to converse with it's partner in crime.

Fate.

Something else that never was good to us. We've watched as it cut the lives of Kolton Enim and Gaia Cross short, we've hoped that our District might just hit the wealth and take it all on the chin: to win.

Whilst fate is something one cannot begin to argue with, frustration strikes like a fork of lightning, growing inside because it has no escape. You learn to contain it, to can it, but sometimes you give in, weaken, and it explodes out like a firework: colours clashing to create an artful mess.

We hate it with all of our fibres, but if you look past the bad you can see through to the good. Fate: it has brought us all the security of family, hearts knit together with love. Friendship and laughter and good times and memories. Our would is built on the pillars of good and bad and for some reason, we focus on the worse.

Because it's just too large of a problem to ignore.

Poverty has four walls and they are slowly closing in on us all, pushing and pulling and crushing and crashing against us. Lungs woven using thread collapse into an empty stomach and then we'll meet the hurt which we've tried to run from.

The pain will hit us like a hurricane, worse than ever next year.

And we'll be faced with a choice: to hope for sympathy and to suffer the slings and arrows of our misfortunes, or to hold up a shield to defend ourselves from lives inevitabilities.

["Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though  

We are not now that strength which in old days  

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;  

One equal temper of heroic hearts,  

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."]