She stood upon the steep cliff that dropped to the bone shattering shards of rock below. The strong sea breeze whipped through her windswept, knotted brown locks flying across her sun spotted young face. A lone tear progressed down her freckled cheek, falling finally from her chin into the wind. She sang her words of sorrow to the violent blue swirl that was the ocean she had once loved. But it had betrayed her. She had heard many tales of lives lost at sea, and now one more was to be added. Her best friend. Mourning her loss, the final word left her lips, swept away by the salty blow.
She was the girl who wrote a lament aged eleven.
There is a story behind this poem. I wrote is when I was eleven (a long time ago) and only found it the other day. In this supposedly a lament is a poem, but actually it is an expression of grief. I had only just heard of the word and was obsessed with it for a while, often using it in writing. Then one holiday I went to the beach and stood atop the headlands watching the angry waves crash on the shore. The words formed in my head and poof! There it was. I ran home and scribbled it on the first piece of paper I could find. It's funny how it's the little things that stay with us, like the ingredients in my mothers fruit salad or the smell of new leather when I purchased my first pair of boots. I like that. Don't you?