• Sacrifice

    Sacrifice  
     
    Dedicated to all those who are no longer
    with us following the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
    High School shooting in Florida on February 14, 2018
     
    In old Christian myths
    women and children of
    the Middle Ages
    were entombed
    as protection against
    disasters of weather
    or war:
    virgins lost
    to German lakes,
    infants buried under
    castle fortresses and bridges
    to ward tsunamis
    or armies...
    But the songs
    of the sacrificed
    are never silent,
    their wailing is the
    wind over the ocean,
    weeping
    long after
    each fortress crumbles.
     
    This, Peter Wang knew
    the moment he heard the blasts
    of an AR-15 semi-automatic
    approaching his classroom
    at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High.
    Among the screams,
    he held the door for his classmates
    and his teachers as if bound
    to act with honor
    by his Junior reserve uniform
    of pressed grey-blue.
    It was gold-pinned,
    with black insignia stitched
    into the shape of wings
    along his shoulders--
    the symbol of a hero, even as
    fear must have crowded his veins.
    No time to think, just
    his blood rushing through him
    like the wave of unbearable grief
    in the heaving sobs of his mother,
    begging to wake from
    her nightmare:
    Baby, hold my hand, she says,
    Reach me,
    the words rippling out of her limbs.
    Print in a newspaper cannot capture
    her pain as
    Peter Wang’s casket
    is carried away,
    stars and stripes
    blanketing the memory of him,
    still in uniform,
    buried with a Medal of Heroism,
    and a Certificate of Appointment to West Point,
    2025--
    the year he would have graduated.
     
    We share the same birthday, he and I,
    except one of us
    will smell the trees and grass on a college campus,
    and one of us will remember
    what’s been lost.
    Our fates intertwined
    yet never crossing,
    except in the gentle March breeze
    when I’m walking to school,
    and to the whisper through half-open windows,
    to the soft flap of curtains, to the silhouette
    in the silence, I listen.​
    Sabrina Guo

    Sabrina Guo
    Grade: 8

    South Woods Middle School
    Syosset, NY 11791

    Educator(s): Theresa Berke
    Stephanie Russell

    Awards: Poetry
    Civic Expression Award, 2019
    Gold Medal, 2019

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