You are finally unveiled: a whole chiseled piece of marble, once roped off but now cracked. And me, blind until now! All I could hear was the bright, white noise buzzing whenever you were in my line of vision. I thought it was an orchestra then.
It wasn’t a wave crashing into a cliffside - chipping at the bluffs, violent erosion, suffocating in rough salt water. It was a foamy tide slowly filling into soft sand until I was a muffled gasp. Shoulders deep in the ocean and limbs tangled in seaweed, my lungs fought a losing battle with the tide.
After an eternity, crisp, cool air floods into my lungs. I untie the strings that only let me walk up to the window but not close enough to open it. The fine line between yours and mine thickened into an ocean, tearing entire continents apart.
For so long, I stood in the eye of the hurricane, screaming for it to stop spinning. I never realized it was just a rain cloud. I was the one who was spinning. When I stopped to look around, flowers sprouted from the cracks of the concrete, and my fear of the pavement evaporated with the puddles. I breathe fresh air now. I will never step back inside.
Grace Gius is a senior in high school who enjoys music, math, and the environment. She expresses her continuously evolving feminism through various art forms, especially photography, painting, and poetry. She is the president of her high school’s feminist club, which works to not only educate themselves and others on intersectional feminism but also to create a safe place for people needing help.
