I often avoid seeing the news. It takes me back to a time where the news covered our daily life. It takes me back to when I couldn’t walk out of school without being attacked by reporters.
So I wasn’t aware when I drove by The Building…. Where 17 people died. Where 17 others were shot. And countless more scarred….
I held my breath as I saw the construction vehicles approaching… finally tearing down the building... Finally? Do I feel the same now as I did in 2018? How do I feel? What do I feel?
Sometimes the only way to process my emotions regarding this trauma is through a poem. So here you go…
Trigger Warning: Vivid imagery regarding Stoneman Douglas school shooting.
Symbolism: “The tall box” represents the “Freshman Building” in which the Stoneman Douglas school shooting mostly occurred. “The sandbox” mentioned in the first verse symbolizes childhood. The second “sandbox”… it develops meaning as you read.
“The Sandbox” by Eleni Webster
A sandbox
A shiny blue plastic toy
A bright yellow rubber ploy
Cranes and trucks
Miniature construction games
Fantasies that deem
The sandbox of dreams
Flash forward
A decade
Or two
It’s not that far
Yet here we are
Burnt red gates
Holding us hostage
To a place that contains all our fears
A microcosm of years
Of torture
Of tears
Of dears
Wide-eyed in the headlights
A time warped machine
Where it will forever be
February 14
The year is 2018
A tall box
In it the last of our innocence
Age of ignorance
Stage of belligerence
Maroon stains of life on the ground
Burgundy cloths are on our backs
Symbols of strength
Or of the length
Of which we were imprisoned
With the very nightmares that haunt us
The ghost of the very monster that chases us
Late at night
The voices and sirens we supposedly hear
To this day I can’t wear that color
I fear
I stuff it in the back of my closet
Because it brings back the stench of the cafeteria
I hide it at the bottom of my drawers
Because it makes me feel the pit in my stomach—in my core
Like I felt in that closet (the day of The War)
I disguise it like I do when I smile
Pretending I don’t remember the smell of fire
The tall box seems so much smaller than before
When a not-so-miniature crane and truck are next to it
When cameras are lined to continue to broadcast our insides to the masses
Supposedly sharing our voices
More so distorting
It all to their agendas
Like the spiral ones that are rotting in the box
Like the wooden desks that are being eaten alive
And the holes in the paper thin walls
Eaten by metal termites that were shot through cannons
The same that killed our kind
Children
The same that played in sandboxes
A shiny blue plastic toy
A bright yellow rubber ploy
Cranes and trucks
Miniature construction games
Fantasies that deem
The sandbox of dreams
That box is gone
In the minds of parents
The sandboxes of 2009
Were once framed in their mind
But now they’re empty
Their child nowhere to be seen
The box that remains?
Demolished
Because the grownups can’t polish
Society into a safe one
Even children have a gun
No playing isn’t fun
When there’s something pointed to your head
No learning isn’t fun
When you hear the trigger
No living isn’t fun
When you hear gunfire
And you’re just a child
The sandbox we sat in
When we turned fourteen
No being a kid wasn’t fun
After the 14th
The Epilogue to "The Sandbox" (PART 2)
I crane my neck
And my muscles tense
My throat swells
My eyes well
So now it’s just dust and ashes
Concrete and rebar
Did they really think this would send our pain afar?
This is something they should have done six years ago
But no
A tragedy was under “investigation”
That’s what you call this?
It’s an abomination
My stomach lurches forward
You really think this moves us toward
Some sort of healing?
This is merely a delay in due diligence
A system’s indolence
“We can’t win with you”
No you will never win in this
Because this isn’t a competition
It’s merely a repetition
Of injustice
Series of punches
Right where it hurts
Right where it burns
In our hearts
Go ahead and like the box
Shatter it into parts
'Cause to them we are just another project to demolish
A generation of melancholics
This whole thing is diabolic
Sons of serpents, hypocrites
That’s what this system is composed of
All of this
Now that we’ve supposedly grown
You can pretend that we aren’t torn
Because “they’re not children in sandboxes,
They’re just traumatized kids who can't remember our promises”
Oh so that’s what you make of us?
“Time will heal”
Yeah go ahead and tell me what to feel
Welcome to a life that is forever surreal
Play us on the newsreel
For the quote-unquote violence appeal
Sell our souls and childhood to the crowd
Scream our feelings that you claim to know, oh so loud
But never care as for the truth
No just zoom in onto Mr. Wilkes Booth
And it’s all a play
A show for today
Until something more “interesting” comes their way
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