What is hope in a world encapsulated? by Chloe Budakian (17, Canada)

Textbook pages folded and cracked preach
something so vile 
we call it human
we name it genocide

​Flesh withers and bones proliferate
but the words feel meaty 
feel burgundy and rancid and heavy

The seal is broken today
blameless eyes untouched
are touched into shrill silence

But book fair erasers and dinner plans beckon 
us to a world encapsulated
they shriek yellow at the burgundy
they ground us like preachers. of recognition and remedies and recognition that the remedies 

failed

Like we did but you won’t
Like hope molds change

But you molded me
 
And you say more I’ve ever known
or I wanted to know. that they “released the prisoners to kill the Armenians and they were
robbing and in the meantime they were killing and [your mother] had no shoes and her feet were
all cracked up
but they didn’t care. they wanted to die.”

And I think that the whole world will swallow me whole
And spit out only the bones of the person that is supposed to supply the solution

The Hope

But out the window laze wanderers warmed by the hands of the sun
and now I am enveloped by the seal again
protected by the seal. I think
we are conditioned to forget so that we may live
we wave away past and present to protect life from truth

The textbook screams history so human 
it makes me sick

Body tenses and lunges at the pages
hands running over the filth try to smooth 
the cracks and the folds and the crinkles that time has pressed into the words
but they are there to stay. permanent and unchangeable.