I read a story today in the Boston Herald about a 14 year old girl named Justine Williams. She is a cancer survivor. She is also a survivor of horrific bullying which she had to endure while going through her cancer treatments. I can’t think of anything more vile than a person preying on another human being while they are enduring a life and death situation. It’s unthinkable, and yet this is evil if ever I saw it.
Accomplished
(for Phoebe Prince)
So you welcomed her—
the new girl from County Clare,
taught her how little things—
wide smile, plaid scarf,
Irish lilt—keep a girl down,
never mind an untouchable who steals
the heart of your star line man.
There’s no room for a swan
in a piranha pool, and so
you strip her flesh with lies,
tear her face from a class photo,
submerge her under your words.
Irish slut . . . skirt’s too short . . . hair’s too curly.
You couldn’t let it go—
this gentle threat,
those tender eyes.
How she longed to just get by;
how she prayed for something,
anything to change before another day.
But someone had to lose.
On the day she left this world
she walked past the bottles
hurled from the window
of a whizzing car, past
the white picket fence
frozen in New England snow,
into a closet where she wrapped
life’s horrors around her neck.
But you weren’t done.
There were new girls
to slam into lockers,
punch in the head.
You returned to what
you’d left behind,
typed one word—
Accomplished—
under your Status Update.