Halloween

This was a poem that I wrote in 9th grade. I was inspired both by Edgar Allan Poe and this painting:

A Wheat field with Crows by Vincent van Gogh

The endless night seemed to swallow up every grain of wheat in view.
I walked forward in hopes of seeing something,
anything, but
even the path at my feet seemed to
disappear into the darkness only a few feet ahead of me.
I stopped to listen;
there was no sound other than
the wind rustling in the tall grasses and
the sound of my breath as I breathed in and out.
I turned around, but
nothing new caught my sight.
Frantically now
I stumble along the path, and yet
I can’t see anything
other than the grains of wheat to my left and right,
the few speckled stars above my head, and
a few feet of the path in front of me.
I want to run,
to get away from here,
to be back in my house in front of the crackling fire with
some roasted chestnuts, but
I am too frightened to do anything other than
stumble around blindly in the darkness of this
black,
black,
night.
Suddenly,
I see something. Wait,
no,
it was only a shadow of the grain, but
it moves as though it longs to be in the clouds, like
the only thing it ever dreamed of was to be
high in the sky
soaring over this wasteland of a globe. It wants to escape:
to be free from its tether to the earth.
So, pity in me now,
I crawl towards the source of the shadow
to discover what this lovesick creature is.
I edge to the side of the path, where
the grasses meet the road,
and,
slowly,
shaking,
I pull the grain aside.
I gasp in horror as I realize,
the shadow that moved as though
it longed to be elsewhere, was
but a corpse of a bird:
beaten and sad,
a chain threaded through its wing, and blood on its chest.
Upon seeing this injustice, I,
already frightened and scared,
scream in anger at the dreadful
person who would do this.
Oh, I so dearly wish that
I had never left my house,
my cozy fireplace,
my wretched family.
So, I, beaten and sad,
tethered to the ground by this fragile bird,
cry my last tear,
and fall, unconscious, to the ground.