‘Unafraid When Death Knocks’ by Aimee Rogers, age 14, Year 9, Coleridge Community College

Travelling on the bitter breeze are their voices.

The ones that we all hear, but brush away.

For none of them have the power to make choices.

 

I see the young children queuing one after another,

Clutching their ration cards in their frostbitten fingers,

Waiting for a scrap of food to feed their mother, father, and brother.

 

Their only source of information is an illegal radio station,

But sill the families huddle around the crackling metal box,

Just to listen to the cries of freedom from another nation.

 

Those cries make them hopeful, but not when He is here,

Dwelling in the lampshades, key-holes, and streetlights,

And in your mother, father, and brother; those strangled by fear.

 

People here are more afraid of the black Dacia idling outside,

Then of when Death knocks on the door to claim yet another,

For a subtle disobedience is a faster way to the other side.

 

We hold hands as we walk through the infamous gate,

Let’s not seal our unchanged fate.