Another title I came up with for this one is "Grandfather's hand" --
Let me know which you prefer... The inspiration came from a painting I saw in my Psychology class today--it portrays a baby's hand grasping the index finger of a wrinkled hand--we w


The Disease

"Foo" the child exclaimed
calling for food from the ground
as she crawled into the next cell

The all too familiar pangs of hunger
echoed throughout her body
as the winter approached

She saw her grandfather
asleep on the cot
his arm hanging down toward her

She reached up
grasping for his hand...
it was ice cold...

She knew what it meant,
it was just like before...
her mother... and father... and everyone else...

Alone...
she was all alone now,
as her last caretaker left her

Left her to fight,
fight against hunger, against cold,
against their disease

He had been the longest to last,
fighting it back time after time
until it seized him just like the others

Wrinkled and weathered
his hand lay limp as she released it
then hanging from his lifeless corpse

It then dawned on her,
the realization that
she too would soon be gone

She grasped his hand tightly again
first hanging on for dear life...
then praying for an end to it all...



Poetry by Ducks
Read 808 times
Written on 2011-08-31 at 03:10

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Neelima
Nice narration...
2011-10-07



What a sad piece, Ducks.
You capture well a sense of abandonment here. I feel the title 'The Disease' may serve a little better, but that is for you to decide of course. The structure works excellently, as jim notes.
Images flow; an accomplished write.
2011-08-31



I like the title and I like the short stanzas that make the story fall into place.
2011-08-31