District Nine Citizen
Who doesn't cry for the Fallen Tributes? Who can see the broken body of a child and not weep? Who does not mourn them when they are gone, or sit in silenced sorrow as tiny coffins are swallowed in the golden fields of grain?
Who does not cry for the dead?
And yet...
Who cries for the living?
I buried my son today. The girl, the monster, from District Four had pulled fifteen bones out of his body while he had screamed in agony, for someone, please, to help him. And when nobody came, he screamed for me. "Dad! Daddy! I want my dad!" Never had he sounded so helpless. It was almost a mercy when the wildebeest came. What was left of his body was broken, his face unrecognizable.
No one helped me lower the wooden box that held the pieces of my child into the ground. No one watched on tearfully as I sang him to sleep for the last time. I couldn't afford a headstone for him. He is buried in my small plot of land that didn't care for him, in a District that doesn't remember him, by a father who could never deserve him.
My wife lies next to him, six feet under as well. I am alone. All that I loved has been reduced to two wooden crosses, small and silent against a sea of amber grain.
I weep for him. But I also weep for me, for I am alone.
I know I have an SYOT going on that I haven't updated in AGES (yeah, super sorry about that. I've just been super busy with homework and school clubs and stuff. Don't expect anything for the next couple weeks, too, because I have finals that I am kinda unprepared for), but with one of my favorite submissions dying, I just really wanted to write something for my fallen Tributes. Every time one of my Tributes dies, I will write about what they left behind. Their families, their friends, their lovers, that kind of stuff. Thanks for reading!