DROWNING
Deeper than an abyss, where a ray of sunshine never goes beyond the surface,
Skimming over the pearly black lake, which my heart is in,
Colder than ice, Quieter than silence,
all of a sudden meteors come crashing in,
Stirring the water, creating roaring waves
Good waves, bad waves, all waves, sad waves.
When sometimes the solution is flickering too far away,
Where we just can’t reach,
When we just want to let go of hope,
The light shining less and less inside of us,
But we have to grasp on,
If not for us, then for them,
The darkness swallowing us with every breath we take,
Diving deeper and deeper with every passing day,
Drowning
The light harder to see,
However, there is no such thing as eternal darkness
Pure black,
Forever nights,
Because sometimes we all need a helping hand,
To pull us out of the lake,
So, we can open our eyes once more,
And see dawn arrive.
Eva Zuzic is 13 years old and lives in Melbourne, Australia. She first found her passion for poetry with what she describes as year 6 scrapbook writing. “We had to add at least one poem into it, and I wrote one with my best friend. I started writing poetry again during the 2021 lockdown when I had nothing to do. So now I like to write when I am bored, to fill in the time. When I write poetry, I like to find a scrap page in my English book or any book really, so it’s hidden away. Or I go online to write, I have a document where I test out different words in different places until I am happy with it. That is what I did with the poem above.”
I really like the way Eva uses light and sound in this poem to explore such a bleak feeling. The piece ends on a positive note by stressing the importance of acknowledging those around who might listen and be ready at the right time to help ‘pull us out of the lake’ into a new and hopefully brighter day. I’m sure that her method of squirrelling away words/ ideas in hidden places and then testing them out until she is happy with them is one that many writers will recognise. Thank you Eva for taking creative risks in writing this poem and wanting to share it with a wider audience and thanks to her teacher Amy Bryans for encouraging her to do so.
Young Poets' Stories 