By Violet Sandridge
7th grade | Summit Charter Middle School | Colorado
Finalist, Climate and Environment category
With lines from “‘They’ll Have To Kill Me First’: Locals in DR Congo Oppose Plans To Drill for Oil” by Josephine Moulds, a Pulitzer Center reporting project
Their words whistle, wandering through our world
Wind wafting their muffled tones onto waiting ears
Confirming fears that they are coming to destroy us.
Words like exploration twisted into exploitation
By the breeze
Drill becomes kill our forests and trees
And oil sounds like soil they’re trying to seize
From our grasping hands.
But with only a rumor
Rumbled by the rainforest,
Chorused by crickets and kingfishers,
Warned by the wind,
There isn’t anything for our hands to grasp.
All we have are words
Ringing hollow,
A tree rotted by years of corruption.
We are told to swallow our fears, follow their lead.
Then why haven’t they kept us up to speed?
Why is it that their words must follow the breeze,
Be twisted and corrupted
But not interrupted by the trees
They are determined to plow through?
The wind winds around the looming teak trees
And the words stretch too,
Stretch and contort until you can barely see the resemblance,
Barely have a remembrance of promises made,
But actions tell the truer story:
Protected lands destroyed at the hands
Of the government.
How can we live content now
Brushing the outstretched palms of the cassava leaves
Or letting fingers linger on the backs of fat yellow caterpillars
When we know the testimonies and truths told by trees and roots?
We can’t be satisfied by bamboo and baked bricks
If we now know the tricks and secrets
Tangled in the branches of teak trees.
Now when we know that they
Fight their legal fights over community rights
We never got to say a word about.
Not only did they auction off our land
But they did so in a process
Plagued by preferential treatment.
A process using a map stolen from our hands
A process outlining plans to take our land
A process taking the ground from where we stand
A process breaking promises
That they would ask us before they destroyed us
But our words don’t need to be wafted by the breeze
Or whispered by the trees
We dig the tip of our spear into our soil
Piercing their dreams of oil
They will have to kill us first
There is no compromise
Our answer is clear and loud enough to hear and loud enough to override the fear
Non!
Violet Sandridge is a rising 8th grade student at Summit Charter Middle School in Boulder, Colorado. She believes learning is invaluable because of the possibilities it opens and the curiosities it satisfies. She particularly enjoys studying English, Math, and Computer Science, and is drawn to the power of writing and the messages it can convey. She expresses herself through her artwork, which has been recognized in Boulder Lifestyle Magazine. In her free time, she delights in reading, spending time with friends and family, and playing tennis and pickleball.
Read more winning entries from the 2024 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.