Outside

By Alex Moore Year 10, Bayfield High School

Tell me how the world is today,

for I won't open my eyes

Number off everything beautiful for me.

Give me a list of all the truly wonderful things,

and I will pin it to my fridge

and read it every day.

1. Today, blood seeped across the pale sky, and the sun made its debut.

2. Today, the afternoon was golden, and the sun cast its light on to everything, from the shining mountains to the glowing stretch of the ocean.

3. Today, the sun plunged back behind the sky, hard and fast, revealing the night-time - a perfect epilogue to a perfect day.

The other lists

are buried deep in a garbage truck somewhere:

out of sight, out of mind.

They made me nervous, you see:

because when I create the cosmos

(how I see it, anyway)

I don't want to think about

black smoke spilling out of factories and into lungs

or plastic floating down rivers in place of driftwood

or cardboard signs that read ``anything helps''.

The house that I live in is a prison of my own design.

The front door is triple-locked,

and there are bars on the windows.

Now, all that I can do

is close my ears

and shut my eyes

and swear never to go outside.

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