Autumn

Autumn

It was autumn and she was halfway through sixteen She was brave, she was selfless, she was the type of hero I could never be It was autumn and she was halfway through sixteen She wouldn't let them mold her into what they wanted her to be It was autumn and she was halfway through sixteen She had a coil scribbler in the pocket of her hoodie And that meant everything So she snuck onto the roof of a train And then was never seen again --- This is a story told through a collection of poems about a teenaged girl who runs away from her hometown.

published 19 days agocompleted

Sisterhood


She can't remember her original name

It doesn't matter

She can remember the fire inside her

That is all that matters

Artemis Inciendio is who she is now

And it's what her new family knows her by

She's been here for who knows how long

In this dead-inside city

Months upon months

That shouldn't be enough to forget your own name but that name was forced upon her and it wasn't her's

So she tried her best to shove it out of her mind and it worked

She had made friends

With other wanderers like her

They were hungry together they were starving together sometimes they were cold together in winters and melting together in summers

She'd passed around the coil scribbler, and they'd all read the blue-inked words scrawled across it

It wasn't Artemis's handwriting

She had no idea whose it was to be honest but it was beautiful

They read to each other and told each other the stories until they were ingrained into their minds.

Fast forwards a few more months

It's the dead of winter

And it's an unnatural cold the cold of marginalization the cold of poverty the cold of nobody caring about you

Not the cold of Parent Nature

She's on the verge of womanhood but not quite there

She's huddled with two other girls in an alley somewhere

Under a raggedy black blanket

The tips of her fingers and her toes go frozen numb

Then her hands and feet

Then her arms and legs

It doesn't stop this time

The sun doesn't peak out of the clouds this time

They tell each other bits of the stories in the notebook

And it's like a fire it warms them

But not quite enough

When it finally is morning, a raven-haired girl untangles herself from two dead bodies, tears streaming down her face

She picks up the notebook in her thin, long, spider-like fingers

And she kisses it

And she kneels in front of her soul-sisters for a moment

And she gets up

And she walks into the morning

A worn-edged notebook in the pocket of her hoodie


———
If you like this piece check out my Mastodon my account is [email protected] and I post about human rights, social justice, and the environment.
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Comments (4)

This was very beautifully written. A very poignant image of runaways, street communities, and the isolation/disconnect of society.
Does this take place in Canada? I always wondered how Canadian travellers deal with those brutal winters. Here in the States we're lucky enough to be able to just hop or hitch straight down to warmer states
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It takes place in a fictional world, but is perhaps inspired by the Canadian winters I’ve grown up with. Thanks for the comment by the way, I really appreciate it!
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17 days ago
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19 days ago
I loved this so much! The style you wrote it in was amazing.
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Thank you so much!!
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17 days ago
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19 days ago