Stones

Stones


Scheduled, but it snuck up on me,

Like a midnight campaign announced by enemy troops.

Horrified, but expected to read steadily,

Like a broken record, the events play out every year in a loop.

 

Innocents spared, but it costs their innocence,

They think they are playing games, but they drain their humanity.

All gone, but they never notice its absence,

They think death is the worst, but the guilt is the real atrocity.

 

Stones stacked, like rifles cocked for massacre,

The scopes aimed at one, yet targets the whole community.

Suspense killing the souls of the village, making their hearts blacker,

The scopes aimed by the eyes of tradition mixed with the deepest depths of humanity.

 

Empty households become emptier,

Mothers are forced to chance the lives of their children.

Boys become men when they have no protector,

Silence drowns the women, children, and men.

 

Order becomes chaos when it breaks tradition,

Safety is found in death when good men do nothing.

The elders brainwash the youth of the nation,

As they were indoctrinated into that thinking.

 

Hurried voices amplify as the inquisition begins,

Once one person knows, there is no secret.

Shock mixes with fear and puts goosebumps on skin,

There is no fair when the judge is the culprit.

 

Families are targeted, children and all,

One is marked for death, the others for mourning.

It is unknown who must answer the call,

But the family will be broken in the morning

 

A black spot marks a forced divorce.

A paralyzed hand, grip unbreakable.

No one’s words worked, she could not be coerced,

Her husband's force revealed the undeniable.

 

Pebbles, rocks, boulders.

Not just men, nor just men and women.

Weapons ready like soldiers,

Prepared and even used by children

 

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.”

Her screams ring out with the crunch of her bones,

We could only pray that what she saw was a light.

Tradition is cemented by stones.

 

 

 

 

 

Original Piece- “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery  

 

 

Citation:

Jackson, Shirley. “‘the Lottery,’ by Shirley Jackson.” The New Yorker, 19 June 1948, www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery.