character poems

katniss everdeen (the hunger games)

I watched my heart turn to evergreens

as I spent my youth on the outskirts

of town, and there was my home—

not the shack, put together years ago

and falling, turning to ash and dust

where my family slept and sang and,

on good days, ate, but I was forever

at home in the whistle of trees circling

my indigo lake, where I clung to when

ripped from the ashes and the dust and

thrown into a galaxy, where I stood

beside stars and lost whole pieces of myself,

this is when I remembered how dawn looked

brushed against the sky above my beautiful forest

a boy at my side with his heart beating with mine,

a drum that echoed far beyond us

the birds came to greet us, the weeds tickled our feet;

it was this tranquility I held onto

when I'd lost nearly everything,

for they could never turn me into

a pawn in a game of me, and fifteen kings,

so long as I held onto the songs of the woods

I kept singing, breathing, until I returned

to my home, finally, finally free.

—born and bred from the tallest trees