Around Me by Gabrielle Galchen (17, New York)

Everyone around me is falling. 

Everyone around me is a candle 
Caught in a storm. 
The earth is graying 
With little white lights flicking the sky. 
Trees are heaving down; 
Rain is flying upwards; 
The sun won’t rise because we no longer see it.
The streets are littered with what used to be;
In the air, bits of debris flit around like snowflakes. ​

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Everyone around me is falling like baby birds,
But I can only ever catch a wing or two, 
Perhaps a beak here or there. 
My arms flail around like maddened hornets. 

Everyone around me is a pasty photograph;
Their edges are blurred raw by what could have been;
They look at me expectantly to start time again
So they won’t remain still, distilled into themselves,
But I am tired. 
I kneel before them with seeds in outstretched hands. 

If reality took on the form of mountains, 
I would batter it into railroads upon rosebeds;
If it were a desert, 
I would fill it with dams like a wedding vase.
But what is cannot be seen 
When it batters against what was, 
So everyone is falling around me 
And I can only nod, silently. 

Do the clouds look down on us and laugh acid tears?
Do angels throw back our wishes like stones into rivers? 

Sorrow lingers in the air like the scent of tobacco.
Everyone around me smokes reality on the daily,
Their lungs swimming as fishes. 

I have tried, 
And I am tired.

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