Lily Compton

Grade: 11

Cleveland School of the Arts

Instructor: Amber Jacob

Rainbow Factory

Poetry

Rainbow Factory

It felt good to be like this.
To be free.
To forget about the real world and spend time in her own illusion of it.
To laugh and have no reason to.
In her own bubble she could tame the wildest beast, she could run forever, in her own little world . . . she wasn't a disappointment.
She could breathe.
It felt ethereal.
So ethereal that she almost forgot that the things that were making her feel incredible were actually killing her.
A white pill that carried a factory.
Millions of little people waiting to get to work.
In her brain they poured the deadly magic, buckets of rainbow colored euphoria.
When all the rest of the colors ran out and there was only one left, they continued to work.
Blue.
So much blue.
It doesn't feel so nice anymore.
Laughs turned to hysterical sobs.
No.
No please-
The bubbles in the air popped.
The sky turned a murky brown and the world began to crumble around her.
Her calls to the wild beast fell on deaf ears.
Oh god.
It was going to devour her.
Its teeth were going to tear into her flesh and make her relive all the bad memories.
It was going to kill her and there was nothing she could do.
She couldn't run.
She couldn't hide.
She couldn't close her eyes, cover her ears or shout…nothing would come out.
She was going to die.