They were on a field trip.
They sat still in the cabin as in the classroom.
‘Stay still, stay still’
The children were still as ordered,
like screws waiting to be assembled on a conveyor belt.
Wearing their life jackets, they waited.
But it was a factory form of capitalism.
‘Move, move, move’,
If someone had said this,
if only they had opened the doors and windows,
that classroom would not have become a grave.
They were on a field trip.
Name tags and bags,
floors of shattered classrooms
all floating in waves.
Each child had a beautiful name,
but for those who wanted to keep the ship,
it was a name of unknown existence.
They had parents who loved them,
but their ends were the same, all the same–
a cold, broken, dead body.
The three words they would have urgently
spat out, which became bubble letters.
“I’ll miss you.”
They were locked in the water jail,
wearing the shroud with a fake name;
‘life jacket.’
They were on a field trip.
But you taught them death
There are still children in the classroom.
The legs that cannot escape from
under the desk, under the chair.
Fingers found broken.
Nails scratching the window.
Now I wonder
Whose hand holds the axe to break the window?
I–Death
They ask children to stay still.
‘You’ll be safe,’
they reassure them.
Children joke
Titanic,
their final traces on this very world.
Laughter fades to uneasiness,
selfies become keepsakes,
phones record voicemails,
jokes give way to necessity,
fingers lock between hands,
teeth clench in silence,
water replaces air.
Waiting. Worrying. Confusing. Grasping. Fearing. Trembling. Panting. Shrieking. Struggling. Stumbling. Pushing. Hurting. Moaning. Groaning. Clutching. Choking. Shoving. Bellowing. Banging. Smashing. Scraping. Breaking. Wailing. Gasping, gasping, gasping for air,
then silence.
Stillness.
II–Rescue
Birds fly over the wreckage.
They send men on a mission–
to punish the sea with oxygen.
Underwater Santa Clauses
carry gifts of theurgical breaths,
and nectarous lullabies of singing bubbles
for lost children to follow in the dark,
and dive into the blue,
where the rampage of evils
has just ended.
The sea, frightened by the men
stops its singing of death’s prelude.
Hands seek hands.
Heavenly prayers–the luscious song of bubbles
flow through cabin and aisle mazes,
calling the lost souls of innocence.
Rooms camouflage into water jails,
souls forever to be imprisoned.
III–After
A sad butterfly sits on the chest of politicians,
a sad butterfly who has lost its place and cannot fly.
I cannot bear to place that ribbon on my chest.
Yunseo Cho is a junior at Branksome Hall Asia, an international school in Jeju, South Korea. She has been previously awarded a Gold Key for her writing in Scholastic Art and Writing 2020. She wishes to further her passion for theatre and literature in the upcoming years.