Arithmetic Errors | Teen Ink

Arithmetic Errors

August 25, 2010
By smart_blonde GOLD, Reno, Nevada
smart_blonde GOLD, Reno, Nevada
10 articles 2 photos 20 comments

Ten less one
Nine plus two
Simple arithmetic always holds true
Nine-Eleven, the inevitable answer
To the blanket of sorrow that spread like cancer

A sleepy eyed angel rises from slumber
Her mind far away, the date a mere number
The first sound she hears as she faces the day
Is that two giant spires have been crumbled away
No explanation, only a screaming T.V,
A confusing whirlwind, a foreign decree

The sleepy eyed angel begins to awaken
Realizes this is not a dream from which she can be shaken
A young mind struggles to find a reaction
To a tragedy worlds away. Did it really happen?

Third world America as debris flew
Not in a young girls world, it can't be true
When did her blanket get taken away?
So much uncertainty all in one day

Parents crying teachers dumbfounded
All from one date into history pounded
A world of doubt all certainty crashed away
The sleepy eyed angel goes to school and plays

Ten less one
Nine plus two
Simple arithmetic always holds true
A tattoo, a memory engraved in the U.S.A
But for the little angel, it comes only after an eternity of days



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This article has 1 comment.


on Apr. 25 2011 at 5:00 pm
AlyssandriaFlamel SILVER, San Jose, California
9 articles 0 photos 6 comments

Favorite Quote:
“Nothing can possibly be as cute as David Tennant holding a kitten. Cause the kitten is adorable and then David Tennant is adorable and then your head explodes and you wake up on the floor of your bedroom twenty minutes later with a sock in one hand and a crushed diet coke can in the other. If you’re lucky. If not, you die of fangasm. Although if that happened to me because of Jack, I could probably get Death by Torchwood on my death certificate….”

This is really pretty--and as someone who lost a cousin to the 9/11 attack, I love the way it shows what happened from a young girls' point of view, uncertain and afraid and upset.

--Alyss