Hell

we traveled
on that train
struggling for air
for three days
two nights
They gave us no food
no water
and eight people died
my grandparents
my baby sister
my mother
and four others
I had never known
finally, They let us
out
and the living
scrambling for
that burst of air
fell onto that
grey, grey ground
Hell is not fire and brimstone
underground
Hell was here
on the surface
grey is the color of Hell
and Hitler was the Devil.
They put the dead
on trucks
said the children
and the sick
could ride
to the camp
twenty miles away.
we all trampled over each other
trying to reach the trucks
greenish-grey, with dull red crosses
emblazoned on each side
after all, who isn't sick
after three days
of no food or water?
the trucks drove away
people desperately hanging onto the back
I never made it
but my little brother did
I never heard from him again
and his only goodbye
was the black smoke
rising in the sky.
I cried that night
I knew I wouldn't be
living much longer.
I came in through the barbed wire gate
and went out through the chimney.
dying is easy
when you're alone.

-Sorry for this first poem being so depressing, but it is an old piece and still one of my favorites. I won five bucks offa this baby in our school's poetry contest-

<3 - brittany