Achilles

I’m the one who falls in love with the stars and I can’t reach them

And You get to sit next to me reading them with your fingers

Each raised dot another galaxy I won’t ever reach

But isn’t it you who should be pitied?

You can’t see what wonders you touch

Yet we all know that you see more than anyone of us

It could’ve been me who inherited the gene

We have the same ones you know, the same chance

Yet I can see the stars that I so longingly want to feel beneath my own fingers

And you play with them like any old toy

No accomplishments here, just jealousy working it’s magic like a tireless artisan

Who meddles in selfishness and feeds on anger

You mean more than the world to me, more than any of the stars around us

But what does that mean to you if that very same world was stolen out beneath your eyes

Aw, there I said it. The word that screwed us all over

An Achilles heel that has never been touched

So weak and vulnerable yet stronger than literally all of us

And I blame myself for not winning the lottery ticket that was shoved into your hands

I would buy a million tickets for myself to try and compensate for what you lost but

Why isn’t there a receipt? This shouldn’t be yours

I feel so selfish as I gaze at the sky decorated with colors you can’t even imagine

One little trait holding the power of a giant in its hands that brought blindness crushing down on your retinas right when you thought your exploring had just begun

Now you explore the mountains through a drawing scratched into your mind with the pencil of words

I’ve become somewhat of an artist now, and the scents around us help me out by filling in my sketch with colors of smells

Your mind is full to the brim with every adjective I throw at you trying to explain the things I wish so desperately you could see

You’re a living art gallery, full of volumes of beauty so meticulously made even Picasso would hide his envy

So obviously, I’m jealous too, of this complex thing I have to live next to that everyone peers at with amazement in their eyes

But there it is again, the thing that screws it all up

I shouldn’t be jealous, I’m selfish and wrong

But, if it was me, I could be an art gallery

With Achilles for a name and stars under my fingers

With no imperfections, wrinkles, or taints in the picture but a tiny, tiny gene that wiped the canvas blank

Carmella McGee is Louie's younger sister. She is in 10th grade at Cretin-Derham Hall High School. She wrote this for a Spoken Word

class project.