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Cloud Aug 2018
She builds a nest, builds a home
Out of twine and twigs and love
Day and night, dawn and gloam,
She works in trees above.

All to prepare for her offspring
To give them the chance to fly
Only the best for her children
These are the words to her cry

A fortnight her eyes are skinned
She is sentinel over her eggs
Come storm, gale, blustering wind
Her treasures safe under her legs

At last she meets her brood
Hungry and unrefined
She tirelessly gathers food
Their lives now intertwined

She kisses the food into their beaks
She cares for their every need
She answers their every screak
To love, to tend, to feed.

She watches them grow new feathers,
And reach out to the beckoning sky
They want to see other weathers
So she teaches them how to fly

They soar higher and higher
She watches from below
It makes her smile and smile
To see her babies go

As they climb and tumble
She makes sure to let them know
They are always welcome to return
To the home built long ago

The love she gave her young ones
Gave them the strength to fly
The strength to build their own nests
High up in the sky.
This poem is dedicated to my Mother.
Cloud Aug 2018
To eat or not to eat?
To disappear into nothingness or to grow and blossom?
To live or to die?
To diet to live?
To live to diet?
To fail or to succeed?
To be strong or to be weak?
To drown or to float?
To be who I am or to be who I wish I were?
To accept imperfection or to strive for perfection?
To be happy and content or to be sad and eternally unsatisfied?
To eat or not to eat?
Cloud Aug 2018
Panic.
The final sound of the door being locked from outside.
Mothers crying for children. Children crying for Mothers.
Hundreds of people shoving you into corners trying to reach loved ones.
A young boy falls to the floor, the mother watches him being trampled, unable to move, unable to breathe.
My lungs are screaming for air.
Where? Why?

Fear.
Stumbling into an unknown darkness.
The fear of falling asleep and never waking up.
Contemplating whether death is better than this.
The terrifying crack of a shotgun.
A silence howling with anxiety.
The beating of the engine counting down minutes perfectly synchronised with my heart.
The lady next to me has her eyes closed, I shake her, silently praying for her to be asleep, she doesn’t stir.

Despair.
I’ve lost track of time, two days, three days, a never ending eternity?
Death surrounds me, trying to pull me in to envelop me, it’s so hard to fight, so easy to welcome.
I am surrounded by people, but have never felt so alone.
We are running on animal instincts, whatever food we have we don’t share.
On this train, good morals ****.

Agony.
The heat, the stifling heat. It is dizzying, nauseating.
The air is too thick to breathe, to live.
There is an overpowering stench, caused by the heat, the absence of a toilet and death.
There is not much space, but what space there is, is filled by a suffocating heat, a choking smell and burning grief.
Pain is soaring through my veins, a toxic predator pouncing on every fibre of hope in my exhausted body.

Embarrassment.
They have reduced us to animals.
I am embarrassed, embarrassed of my hygiene, embarrassed of my inability to do anything, embarrassed of my selfishness.
Embarrassment is no worse than ******, as when a person is embarrassed they wish to be dead.
It is emotional homicide.

Exhaustion.
I am so tired.
My body is crumpled, being held up by others, some dead, some wishing to be dead.
At first I was focused on surviving, my body was fighting, but now I’m too tired to fight.
My hunger is now just a numb aching, but my thirst seems to be pounding every cell in my body, a constant beating.
I am tired of crying, tired of praying, tired of hearing other people’s cries, tired of hearing other people’s prayers.

Hope.
I hear a voice, singing.
A mother to her child.
The sweet sound of her voice seems to dissolve the clouds of pain and misery hanging over us.
Another voice joins in, a man’s voice.
Two more people join in; gradually the whole carriage starts to sing, united.
I join in grasping for the shreds of energy I didn’t think I had.
We sing louder and louder, our voices drown out the protesting orders to stop.
The train slows to a stop, and the doors slide open.
I breathe, and for the first time in too long, my lungs are satisfied with the oxygen that reaches them.
As our bodies rush out of the carriage, still singing, I am filled with a new sense of hope that whatever is coming next couldn’t possibly be worse than what I’d just been through.
Could it?
During the Holocaust cattle trains were used for mass deportation of Jews and other victims of the Holocaust to concentration camps. Men, women and children were stuffed into these carriages with no food, water or toilet and just a small barred window. The journeys took days, sometimes weeks and a large number of people didn't survive the journey. Having survived the journey the victims would then either be immediately taken to a gas chamber and brutally murdered or forced to work under the harshest conditions imaginable where they were unlikely to survive. Having visited a number of the concentration camps in Poland and heard accounts of survivors, I wanted to try and capture a fraction of the pain those people endured in that journey full of doubts and questions.
Cloud Aug 2018
"She suffers with depression".
What do you see right now? In your mind's eye?
I know what you see.
You see a pale, skinny but beautiful girl curled up in their bed all sad and crying into the arms of a parent/lover/friend.
Let me tell you something.
That's not what it looks like.
Depression is not romantic.
That girl hasn't showered for three days. Her room smells. Her hair is greasy and unkempt.
She isn't crying. She's binge eating while watching TV episodes into the night.
Cloud Aug 2018
so soft from afar
icy droplets within
frozen
suspended
but so soft from afar

covering the sky
how can water be so opaque?
dark
ominous
covering the clear blue sky above

sometimes ropes sometimes blankets
sometimes hills sometimes *******
these droplets of water defy gravity
withstand wind and sun
they give me hope
Cloud Aug 2018
OK
"Hey, I heard about your dad, hope everything is ok?"
It's not ok.
Of course it's not ok.
Nothing is ok.
My dad is lying in isolation in intensive care.
Although he doesn't look like my dad anymore.
He's so ill, even my uncle who's a doctor is crying.
I'm scared for him.
I miss him.
Even when he awake he's not really there because he's so confused.
I miss my dad.
I want him back.
He's not ok.
I have to get my work done otherwise I'll fail my course.
But I can't do it.
I can't say this to anyone.
I just can't open up because I'm scared I'll be seen differently.
That's not ok.
Everything is out of control.
That's not ok.
So I'm controlling my food and my weight.
But it's so stressful.
I want everything to stop.
I want everything to be ok.
"Yeh it's all good thanks, how are you?"

— The End —