Tenth Grade Presentation Of Learning
This is too much for an old man, I am drowning in regret. Stumbling to my feet, I push the others away and shove myself through the door. Their unsettled cries ring after me but my troubled mind is filled with so much pain I don’t notice the concern threaded in among Dieter’s features. My ears are deafened to sound, my eyes deadened to color, my heart burns with pain.
I push my weak body up flights of stairs, my uniform feeding me energy borrowed from a young medic long ago.
Gasping in the fresh air of the rooftop of the hospital I hear my comrades steps pounding up the steps, their wheezing breath signaling they struggle as well. I gaze out at the pristine beauty of Strasbourg, my eyes frantically searching for that one last comfort, that one last jut of hope that I could actually learn to belong. There was no such luck. My experiences have set me apart from the rest of the world, fencing me off as an item of danger, fencing me off even from myself. Even as an old man in a welcoming community, I never really connected. That one fatal day where I decided my fate in the generals room, changed me to the point of no return. Life is worthless to a man with corrupted twisted honor; there is no space for him in an unforgiving world.
I gathered myself onto the ledge, holding my breath as if that would make it easier. Speaking outward to nothing, to the inevitable, beautiful death waiting to release me from a cursed life, I whisper in a cracked voice, “Consume me” calling out to the heavens, I cry, “death, consume me! Do with me what you will, carry it out quickly.”
My body betrays me and I watch as a silent tear traces its suicidal path to the ground, shattering on the lane below. It illuminates the way I must take to free myself, and makes the terrible path seem a little less dark, a little easier. With a final breath, I gaze out on the rest of the world, and find the beauty in every last stone-cold item on this time-ridden world.
Air whispers through my fingers as I soar to the soft forgiving street below.
From the outside it looked like I threw myself off the ledge, but I floated. I swept my way down to the street outside, then danced my way back up into the open sky, to whatever fate awaits me in heaven, never once looking back on the distraught face of Dieter, still looking in the wrong direction, looking down to the beautifully arranged, but terribly broken husk of the old man I used to be.
I had nothing left and I was free.
I push my weak body up flights of stairs, my uniform feeding me energy borrowed from a young medic long ago.
Gasping in the fresh air of the rooftop of the hospital I hear my comrades steps pounding up the steps, their wheezing breath signaling they struggle as well. I gaze out at the pristine beauty of Strasbourg, my eyes frantically searching for that one last comfort, that one last jut of hope that I could actually learn to belong. There was no such luck. My experiences have set me apart from the rest of the world, fencing me off as an item of danger, fencing me off even from myself. Even as an old man in a welcoming community, I never really connected. That one fatal day where I decided my fate in the generals room, changed me to the point of no return. Life is worthless to a man with corrupted twisted honor; there is no space for him in an unforgiving world.
I gathered myself onto the ledge, holding my breath as if that would make it easier. Speaking outward to nothing, to the inevitable, beautiful death waiting to release me from a cursed life, I whisper in a cracked voice, “Consume me” calling out to the heavens, I cry, “death, consume me! Do with me what you will, carry it out quickly.”
My body betrays me and I watch as a silent tear traces its suicidal path to the ground, shattering on the lane below. It illuminates the way I must take to free myself, and makes the terrible path seem a little less dark, a little easier. With a final breath, I gaze out on the rest of the world, and find the beauty in every last stone-cold item on this time-ridden world.
Air whispers through my fingers as I soar to the soft forgiving street below.
From the outside it looked like I threw myself off the ledge, but I floated. I swept my way down to the street outside, then danced my way back up into the open sky, to whatever fate awaits me in heaven, never once looking back on the distraught face of Dieter, still looking in the wrong direction, looking down to the beautifully arranged, but terribly broken husk of the old man I used to be.
I had nothing left and I was free.