Perhaps you think my lips dissembling, Of virtuous sorrows feign a tale, Then mark my frame with anguish trembling, My hollow eyes and features pale, E'en should my story prove ideal, Too well these wasted limbs declare, My wants at least are not unreal, Then stranger grant the Orphan's pray'r.


"Everything will be alright.." the mother whispered into her child's ear.

They lay in a broken bed, the mother clutching her dearest son close to her. They both shivered in the cold, without a blanket to warm them. They sweat due to the fever. The son grabbed at his mother's shoulder as she held him.

"Mama... I'm scared," the child spoke with a feverish voice, on the brink of passing out.

"It's okay, m'ijo. Orar a Dios y todo desaparecerá."

The mother could slowly feel herself slipping away, but she held onto her son, her hijo.

And so the child prayed.

A tingling sensation flood through his arms and hands. He thought nothing of it.


Hark! Hark! for sure some foot-step's near me, Advancing, press the drifted snow, I die for food; oh! stranger, hear me, I die for food; some alms bestow; You see no guilty wretch implore you, No wanton kneels in feign'd despair, A famished Orphan kneels before you, Oh grant the famished Orphan's pray'r.


The child knocked weakly on the wooden door, praying for someone to answer.

Someone did. A man, not yet over thirty.

"Please, sir," the child spoke with a raspy voice from starvation and dehydration, "I am hungry, I am tired, I am cold. All I ask is one night and a simple dinner."

The reply was instantaneous- a door to the face.

"Please sir," he said through the door, "Anything, sir." He could sense the man was still standing there.

Suddenly, the door was thrown open and the orphan fell onto his knees at the stranger's feet. The man threw a loaf of bread and an apple at the child. They froze for a second in mid-air before hitting the orphan in the face. He decided it was simply an hallucination.

"Thank you, sir." and the door was in his face once more.


The frozen streets in moonshine glitter, The midnight hour has long been past, Ah me! the wind blows keen and bitter, I sink beneath the piercing blast. In ev'ry vein seems life to languish, Their weight my limbs no more can bear, But no one sooths the Orphan's anguish, And no one hears the Orphan's pray'r.


The winds started slow, it was a simple storm at first. Just rain. But the speeds picked up and they got louder and louder. The rain got heavier. The two of them combined became a hurricane

The orphan grabbed a ribbon and ran upstairs, making sure to snatch his writing materials on the way.

He didn't end up writing, instead was huddled into the corner, crying his lungs out when an especially loud bit of wind hit the unstable house.

There were screams outside. Alexander hated it. He wanted to go, he wanted to leave the island, he wanted to see his mother, he needed to-

he needed to write. So he picked up a quill and, despite his fears, wrote. To his father. About the hurricane. He prayed for the hurricane to stop. And, though he was sure to deny it if asked, the sounds of the hurricane were quiet. The house still rocked.

Perhaps he was in the eye. Perhaps.


He's gone, no mercy man will show me, In prayers no more I'll waste my breath.


John was dead.

It couldn't be.

Why must it be?

But alas the letter was true, the father spoke no lie. His dearest Laurens was gone.

No more prayers, seeing as they do no good. They took his mother and his friend - his lover.

In a fit of anger, both at himself and at John, for how dare he leave- Alexander screamed into a pillow that was in his hands. He tore his letter drafts to John seeing as they'd come in no use. He tugged at his hair, causing it to fall down past his shoulders. He almost broke his writing desk.

A quill snapped into two in front of his eyes, without him touching it.

Well, he had smacked the table.

No more prayers. They do nothing.

"I have so much work to do."


POEM IS NOT MINE

2009/02/24/orphans-in-rhyme-and-old-style-print/

Spanish is probably wrong, I used google translate. Here's the translation anyway:

m'ijo = my son
Orar a Dios y todo desaparecerá = pray to god and everything will disappear
hijo = son

I'm actually an atheist lmao