Welcome to the nation. Welcome to the place where everything is monitored... everything is portioned... everything is perfectly under control...
Everything except the SkyTrain Holland Renner was aboard.
In a matter of seconds, Holland finds herself...
Congratulations, Claire! Your poem was flawless and captured so much emotion with beautiful phrasing. Your poem is the essence of Enhancement. I am stunned that a reader could understand all the emotion and feeling I embody when I write Enhancement. This is probably the most touching, understanding piece of writing I've ever read.
BEFORE U READ: my entry isn't based on 'telling a story', and instead my goal was to convey the atmosphere of the entire story?? like the very emotionally oppressing, environment whilst including motifs that you've used (eg. skytrain, equinox, holograms + technology etc etc etc). so don't think of it as i'm trying to tell a story--think of it as i'm trying to summarise the atmosphere of the story in just a few measly paragraphs c:
ENHANCED : BY CLAIRE
Is this how the world ends?
Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With four white walls, blowing vicious insults through vents above my head— My hands cold like an invisible arctic winter.
Is this how I will live?
The tickling, suffocating scent of something antiseptic, something chemical, something clean. My legs hanging over the void, my hands perched by my sides and My eyes scanning the synthetic sunsets for a shooting star. But it's white and Cold And Empty.
What is this place?
Alight with twinkles, Wires. Flashing screens pulse, Alive and breathing warnings Down my neck. Careful, careful, careful, they say-- As the trains plunge me into a world Existing below, in the underbelly of the beast.
What am I doing?
When my screams morph into pleads, And my pleads morph into phrases, And then words, And letters that turn Into nothing.
Holograms flickering like fickle-minded light bulbs. Just like me. What do I fight for? When the sun crosses a celestial equator, When day and night have been conceived as twins. What do I fight for? I ask myself. My insides have been parched by flame, My skin has been pulled taut across the ground. I don't know, I don't know.
Is this how the world ends? When I've long known that imminent failure is but a shadow, Crawling along the curve of my collarbones, Tapping tunes on my temples, Reminding me, "I'm coming."
Because the clattering of machinery, And the hotness of gunfire, Exists as nothing but a memory. A reminder, We were here, We did this. We were too late. ... Were we too late?
Who was he?
There's a name on the tip of my tongue, A name that in the day, feels sweet, And in the night, feels bitter. And feels numb and cold in-between.
Who was I?
I used to be able to feel, The blood trudging through my Wary veins. I used to be able to feel, The slick sweat on The hollow of my neck— Just there. And sometimes when I think about it, I think it boils down to this: I used to be able to feel.
Who am I?
Sometimes I think I Change so quickly I become a whizzing electron, Orbiting a light A billion times brighter than the sun.
Who is this girl? Who is this— Bruised and battered, Shattered a million times by the rain, And rebuilt a billion times, cell by cell, by the sun.
What have I become?
In reality? I've been Enhanced--bone by bone. Destroyed--tear by tear. I'm a reinvention of some sort.
