To Survive

To Survive

By Moya Cavanagh
Browns River Middle School, Grade 8

It has been
Said,
All too often,
“When hell freezes over,”
What about
When hell runs in rivers
When it breaks the dams and brings avalanches
Of water in walls and blockades
With tearing destructive power
Hurling the anchors of civilization
Away for something else…

But it still hasn’t found what it’s looking
For.
To survive the flood was to dive into
Hell
And break the surface unscathed.

To survive the flood was to
Walk among the splinters and ruins
Of a sand castle after a wave.

Windows
Doors
A scuffed leather shoe,
Skeins of yarn,
Photographs,
Candlesticks,
Skeleton keys
A single glove,
The shattered porcelain face of a doll by
A child who cries,
For all that is,
And was,
And has died.
Lives sent spinning,
Changed ruined
Opened
Broken

To survive the flood was to walk among the
Ghosts
Of those still half alive,

For to survive the flood
Was
To see such destruction of all that
You once knew,
Was to see your doom flash before your
Eyes
Even though you
Knew you’d survived.

To survive
Was to start anew
In the after math
Of hell’s
Crushing tides
In the cold of November,
To salvage,
To recollect
To try, and
Try,
To start again…
To cry,
To mourn for the silenced,
The fifty-five who had died.
And to wonder if you were worthy
To continue your life
As it was
As it now is…