Each quarter, AmeriCorps collects “Great Stories” from our members throughout the region about their experiences assisting regional youth in their classrooms.
This month’s story is a poem from Shelbie English, reflecting on her experience during the Spring 2017 semester:
They don’t build ships that can carry this heavy a load,
There are no streets with signs that tell you where to go,
Making up stories that rhyme in your head,
Just to make the days go on through the dread,
I pass through the hallway like a giant in a village,
The haunting throb of my own knowledge,
I don’t pity, but hate what they live,
I don’t have much, but it is my time that I give
Her sorrow that tells her to frown,
She wears the face of a warrior,
Some Valkyrie fighting pain and fear,
She knows more than I do, Has seen more of the world,
The harsh, black, abysmal, pit,
To her I am sunshine, Her face changes shape,
She wears less armor, She knows less hate,
And a smile spreads across her face,
The load that I carry becomes weighted down in her sorrow,
But I carry it gladly for the course of our time together,
I trade my privilege and guilt, for an hour with her mind,
More than the restless wanderings she usually occupies,
She is new each day, sometimes angry but that fades,
Her hurt is what I fear, I walk the distance of the halls,
Return her to her peers,
I slowly feel the creep of my twenty-four years,
In all the time I have had on earth,
There is not a sweeter sound I have heard,
Than the sound of her worry and grief,
Fall from her shoulders and crash at her feet,
Jagged the pieces of a collection of memories,
Replaced with a new and livelier memory,
With hope for infinity, I am not special, nor super, nor great,
I do not wear a mask, or tights, or a cape,
But I make her smile, And she makes me laugh,
And together we walk away from the past,
She looks to the future,
Someplace she didn’t know before,
I can’t solve all her problems,
Nor secure her fate,
I can only be her friend,
Because that’s what she needs,
Someone to listen, Someone to care,
So I keep on visiting, Each week for an hour,
I watch her grow, change, and gain power,
Her frown is less common, Her words have less hurt,
She wants more from life, And that is what she deserves,
Not money, or pity, or charity, or clothes,
But a future that is brighter than the present she knows,
She will walk with great purpose; no one holds her hand,
She stands up straight, and has a newfound plan,
And if she needs a friend, she will know where to find me,
In the memories we built, and the mountains we climbed,
In the thoughts we formed, and the ideas we tried,
The games we played, the stories we read,
They are all new memories, she carries in her head.
And she is not alone, for I have them too,
They are reminders of the good we all can do,
To shuffle the deck, deal a better hand,
It takes a village, or one woman, or one man,
One hour of friendship, a listening ear,
To see what can change in the course of a year,
To help build new bridges, Or watch old ones burn,
Or see what lessons that we grown-ups can learn.
