Work Text:
She had been dead for a long time, when
I found Damara Megido’s diary.
A lined notebook, tucked against gym roof’s eave,
Under gutter, in a binder sleeve.
No bullies, she must have thought, could find it there.
Why would I try to read it? I admit,
Curiosity is strong in this one;
What would a girl write, I had to know, who ends up
Committing to take her life by her own hand?
I’m an aspiring writer, I told myself,
I have a right, a press man’s interest,
Don’t they write history? And she dead,
It’s not like I do any harm to anyone.
More like her honors, almost, I thought.
Here goes a bottle
Of expensive Pinot on M/S Mortality.
Damara was in my class. I am no hero;
I know she was bullied, though not by me.
“Give you a joint if you swallow”, someone said
(I think I smiled) “Out of my way, asian whore”,
(that time i didn’t, but I snickered when)
She found a TRUE LOVE. a SAVIOR. her PETER PAN
Who took her to the neverland of love.
“Someone had been killed on school grounds?” the word was first, as whispered.
Then, later, “Oh, her? Then it’s not a mass murderer…”
That was the hedonistic comfort of… children, I guess.
“She took her own life?” A bully tries to hide their grief:
“What a loser…” To most, it hurt like hell,
But life took on. She has been gone for long,
Measured in teenage years.
Of course, she had written in Japanese,
most of it was incomprehensible to me.
She had drawn cute kittens, though, in manga style.
How lovely.
All just doodles,
no amazing gift, the same as me.
Some lyrics, Japanese and English,
odd French and German mixed in to top it up.
Her words, or someone other’s. Both, I think in fact.
“Yeah, I wish I’d been a, wish I’d been a teen, teen idle
Wish I’d been a prom queen fighting for the title
Instead of being sixteen and burning up a bible”
“So allein will ich nicht sein
Wo bist du, wo bist du”
Accompanied by pictures of her crush…
And curiously, flocks and flocks of birds.
Feathers. Wing studies?
“If one believe you can fly
does it give one wings”
I was cold. And lonely.
As if the book
Had been browsed by someone, on the other side.
I felt the daylight dimming, for a moment, and buried
The book, where she had jumped down, at the riverbank.
“If one believe you can fly
does it give one wings”