ℙ𝕃𝔸𝕐 𝕎𝕀𝕋ℍ 𝔽𝕀ℝ𝔼 // F.Odair

ℑ - 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℜ𝔢𝔞𝔭𝔦𝔫𝔤

𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑'𝐒 last words to me before she died were lines of a riddle with the rest of the pages burning. She spoke in her mother tongue, one her mother and her mother before that had spoken – leading to 200 years before from where they moved from a foreign country to the place where Panem now stood. Decades of history dwindled down to the words spoken from one person to another.

"La abeja no debería poder volar, pero lo hace de todos modos." The bee shouldn't be able to fly, but it does anyway.

She'd said the words as if I was a translator of both mouth and mind, like I could decipher the meaning by words spoken which I hold no ties too. I wonder if those words she uttered were meant to be as important to me as they were to her, if their meaning was a secret held close between us. But that's the thing about secret's, they're better kept if the one holding them is dead. No words come from the dead, no explanation or goodbyes, just silence. Which is why when I have secret's not to be told, but that wish to be spoken aloud, I sit in front of the grave of the one person who always has and always will know everything about me.

Sofia Carrillo

We once looked alike, I was told but now that I have reached the age that states half of her life gone, I wish that I looked nothing like the woman currently six feet under the earth's surface. For if she died so young, how could anyone tell me I am destined for anything different? I am but a mere speck of dust in the building of Panem. Nobody would wonder where I went if I was obliterated from existence, some would say that without me the place is easier to clean.

Ramona Carrillo. A name that stands out in the register of wheat and grain inspired names. A girl from District Nine should not hold such a name, it was fit for a world vanished, not the one lived in by many. According to the books and pages that date back to before Panem was even an idea in someone's mind, my name showed of 'Mexican descent'. Mexican. I sometimes wonder if that word ever meant anything in anyone's mind in one period of time, but to me it is purely just a word that states my difference to everyone else. My reason for obliteration. Nobody would miss me, but perhaps I would be remembered by the wisps of wind that caress my hair every morning, or by the path I've worn into the fields I walk daily. I was once told by a little girl that I think too low of myself, but I would rather underestimate myself than overestimate. I would rather come off naive than arrogant.

"Romie!"

It's humorous how the past calls to me more than the present. I look down at the slab of stone in front of me, the name I think of everyday but am never able to see the face of engraved into the front of the rock. Fresh dandelions are placed at the foot of it. It was rare for a grave to sit in District Nine, where every field was covered in the only thing that the Capitol deemed we were good enough for –other than entertainment– but it was fitting that the thing that was not common was placed in the name of the most unique person there ever was.

It was reaping day today, where the citizens of Nine gathered to send two sacrifices on a train ride to their eventual death. So as always, I say goodbye for what could be the last time to the last symbol that the woman who birthed me was a part of the existence of Panem, and not just a figment of my imagination that helps me not feel so alone.

Lonely. Perhaps I should replace my name with the word and be done with it, considering it likes to follow me around everywhere I go. I don't think I've had any human interaction since I was kicked out of the orphanage four years ago.

Alone. The perfect adjective to describe my current state of being. I look up and stare at the wood panel that separates my back garden from the world, and I stare in the opposite direction and see the familiar sight of Nine's 'last line' of containment –my favourite C word. An electric fence. One powered from 10 o'clock at night to 4 o'clock in the morning. Every other hour there were 5 peacekeepers on each compass point patrolling around the clock. Though easily forgotten, the people of Nine were no strangers to weekly attempted escapes of citizens that had had enough –something that every single other person in the district could say, they just didn't have a death wish. Although, I sometimes wondered if it wasn't a wish to die, but a wish to live.