7f ❧ darby / finished
May 6, 2021 22:42:05 GMT -5
Post by tris 🍒 on May 6, 2021 22:42:05 GMT -5
kimber darby ▸ sixteen
district seven ▸ she/they
the fifth annual hunger games
" my wants reach farther than the horizon
— i hunger for a thing i can't see,
can't touch, can't know, can't fear;
and i hope so recklessly
that it's fairer than this place
— kinder, and softer, and all mine.
better than the ruin, and the loss
— orphans playing in the skeletons of burnt down homes,
and childless mothers kneeling by gravestones.
the truth is, my childhood is a fallout
— and worse, my tragedy is one
i share with the entire country.
so, yes, i want to go.
anywhere, and everywhere
— follow a map straight to its edge,
and then fall right off into the unknown;
because it's hard to be afraid
when you're raised on war stories.
my father taught me to write early,
and i try to be grateful for this
— because i will learn nothing else from him;
and my mother said i could do anything,
so sweetly with gunfire echoing behind her words
— and now she'll never see who i become.
what's outside of this district?
just more sadness, the maps tell me;
twelve layers of it, crushed under a fist
that stole everything from me
— and then what's beyond that?
what do i call the places i dream of?
where do the rivers lead,
and to who do these familiar trees bow their heads?
what flowers grow where the soil is not soaked with blood?
i wonder what the birds sing just over the mountains.
i'll know someday.
i'll scream every syllable of the name.
i'll chart every inch of the wilderness.
and i'll never look back. "
/ memoir for a life not lived,
k. darby