Former Fluco Gracie Walton, who graduated from FCHS in 2019, wrote this poem in Elizabeth Pellicane’s Creative Writing class that year. She had “Crushed Under the Weight” accepted for publication by the American Library of Poetry and recently learned that it will again be published in this year’s edition of their “Gifted”  national publication.

Crushed Under the Weight

by Gracie Walton ’19

My tears weigh down my heart 

Flooding my soul with sorrow 

Your memory

A constant reminder that I can’t save the ones I love 

My heart is heavy 

And no one can save me from falling 

I’m slipping… and I don’t know what to do

I’m a mess in my sorrows that cloud around me 

They fill the skies with my cries 

The cries that no one hears in the night 

For they are smothered by my façade 

My mask that is cracking under the pressure 

The lies of, “Ok” and “I’m fine” litter the ground like corpses 

Like forgotten toys of a bygone childhood 

My smile quivers on my cracked lips

Yet moist by the fresh tears as they cascade down like a waterfall 

My heart shatters in my chest 

My soul, too tired to continue 

Gives up the fight against the lies

I am crushed–I am free.