literature

X Marks the Spot

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Literature Text

You always told me that X marks the spot
That when you dig
D
E
E
P
                      Down you’ll find the treasure,
                              The one that pirates always seem to find in picture books.
That X marks the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,
             The good-luck shamrocks,
                      Or a blessing that will grant 3 wishes.

Those X’s are meant to be fought over,
Not meant to be shared or savored,
But greedily snatched away and hidden,
So that no one else can get their hands on one.
   . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now I don’t know if I want to follow where this X is taking me,
Since I’m almost sure that there is no happily ever after to this story.
No rewards under this X.
Just piles of misery and decay waiting to be uncovered.
All the other X’s I’ve seen on my way here have scribbles in every section,
But yours is e m p t y
And it makes me glad . . .
For now.
Because the upper quadrant of an X here tells the world when the house was checked,
When the fading memories of life were finally destroyed,
Walls torn through for signs of life,
Water damaged photographs cast aside,
Everything destroyed.
The left quadrant is reserved for the team that did the checking.
The people in masks and biohazard suits that try and clear the area,
People like me.
Then there’s the hardest one, the bottom quadrant.
This one counts up the deaths.
Lives swept away by the water’s roar,
Ones crushed by the house itself,
Life seeping through their fragile skin,
Leaving but a shell behind.

                                         The lucky ones are left empty
                                      But not everyone is that fortunate

Sometimes the last one, the right quadrant, is left untouched.
                 This one totals the hazards.
The vicious beasts that took refuge in the house to escape the ferocious storm.
The deadly, cancerous mold that forces us to be careful of not only what we touch,
                                                                                            But what we breathe.
The list goes on and on, each thing potentially deathly,
Making us put each one of our lives on the line every time we enter the residence of those

who left.

. . . . . . . . . . . .
Today I’m alone.
I don’t want to share the findings, the “treasure” of my X, with anyone else.
The knowledge and secrets it holds are   m    i      n      e  

The door we always entered together swings sadly,
                  A single hinge holds it to the fading frame of your birthplace.
          How sad it would be, to spend your whole life here,
        To the point where you never got a chance to make it out into the real world.

I push through the rotting wood,
The reek of decay charges at me,
Causing spasms of coughs to shudder through my body.

Nothing is left of your living room.
         The place we spent the summer of 1996
                  Learning how to tie shoelaces on the squishy plaid couch.
The stairs that we raced up every day of our childhood has crumbled down,
                Leaving the upper rooms untouchable,
Even though they’re the ones I want to access the most.
They’re the ones that hold the memory of our first,
   Clumsy,
Kiss.
                         The rooms where we sliced open the top of our hands,
Just so our blood could mix and I could finally pretend I was really related to you.
   The rooms that we spent the never ending days together,
Just happy to spend every waking moment in each other’s arms.
                                                    Now they’re gone.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
      The last room is the hardest.
The door even has been latched shut as to try and block me from seeing its contents.
          But the deteriorating wood gives way to my will,
Opening into darkness.
                                                            The sun’s warmth can touch me here,

                                         The roof has collapsed inward,
                            Shafts of the ceiling scattered into the ground.
                                For but I moment I think its going to be okay.
                                  That the only thing here that is gone
                Are the pressing memories that we worked so hard to make,
                        The ones that will always be imprinted in our hearts.
                              But there’s always more that you can lose.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Because then I see your face.

             Or more, what’s left of it.
      Your brown hair still has waves that tumble in front of your faraway eyes,

                                                        But everything else is gone.
                                   Your creamy, caramel skin is tainted purple
                                                      And your eyes are swollen shut.
                                                             Body bloated in some places,
                                                                              Sunken in others.

I try to blink my cascading tears away,
  But their presence is evident on my face.
    I try to turn my back on you,
      To erase the memories that occupy my mind,
        But they continuously flood into me,
          Just like the water flooded your house,
            Till the point it crushed the life out of you.

                         That’s how I feel right now.

                                                               .    .    .

Before I leave, I take one last glance upon you.
                                One last look on the face I grew to love so much.
                        One last look at the man I would have risked anything just to see again.
                One last look at the supports in the ceiling that have fallen on your chest,
          The one’s that make an X across your torso,
          Because it’s just like you always told me,
                                                        X marks the spot.
This is something that I wrote as a tribute to New Orleans, and I would really appreciate it if people actually read through it, even though its like freakishly long.

Just for like the majority of everyone that doesn't know this is what they're talking about :
In New Orleans every house that was hit by Hurricane Katrina was searched through and when they were done they put an X on the side with spray paint. The top section of the X said the date it was searched, the left says the people who searched it, bottom is number of human deaths, and the right can be used for hazards found in the house. And no matter how much people tried to paint over the X's you can always see the spray paint of the X underneath it. It's quite sad.

This is basically an open poem about a girl who "guts" houses, and is searching one of a man she grew up with, and loved, and how in New Orleans X's are a big deal and not a good thing. . .
© 2009 - 2024 alanat
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Felzm's avatar
Hi again dear Alana, I owed you to read this story, I congratulate you, you are so brave and so sweet by writing this, yeah, by reading it I knew you wrote about New Orleans and Katrina, you have the hearth just on its side as always, and you wrote a very emotive and poetic poem, was that man the father of the girl? Is it the situacion so bad still now?

Here, on my house, some guys paint graffitis, I could to erase them, even a "X" whit many hands of paint, How kind of paint was used on New Orleans, that it follows there?

Be happy, I miss you a bit, A. Marie.