carte blanche
/kɑːt ˈblɑːnʃ/
noun
complete freedom to act as one wishes.
A boy, nineteen, is alone at home,
Which he finds is often the case,
No one to talk to, feeling alone,
He searches for a high to chase.
A man comes back from a long day of work,
To find his door ajar,
He steps inside and calls out a name,
Then lets out a cry of alarm.
A young girl lies in bed and stares into space,
Trying to will herself not to cry,
She finds that the orphanage is a terrible place,
If you want to feel happy, or even alive.
A woman aims a plate at her husband’s head,
And asks if he trusts her not to throw,
He says that he does and she snarls at his words,
Her voice comes out dangerously low.
The boy takes a swig straight from the bottle,
And his face contorts in distaste,
But he finds that as the liquid moves down his throat,
It leaves a warm, fuzzy feeling in its place.
The man picks up his phone to call the police,
Or an ambulance – he can’t seem to think straight,
His wife’s head is on the table, eyes closed shut,
And blood is dripping down her face.
The girl startles when her name is yelled,
By a caretaker she knows all too well,
She’s screamed at and scolded by the heartless woman,
Who tells her to get out of bed.
The woman puts the plate down calmly,
And looks her husband dead in the eyes,
And says she’s happy one of them still has trust,
She’s far too done with his lies.
The boy keeps on drinking, his parents wouldn’t care,
They let him do whatever he likes,
Bitterly he thinks, that that’s what happens,
When you’re too busy for your children’s lives.
The man stutters out his predicament,
To the attentive ears of the police,
His wife’s pulse has slowed to nothing,
And he is overwhelmed with grief.
The girls gets up, devoid of emotion,
And decides she has had enough of this life,
She only ever cared about what her parents thought,
Her parents who are no longer alive.
The woman ignores what her husband has to say,
And packs her bags late into the night,
She refuses to give him one last look,
As she gets in the car and begins to drive.
The boy is hit by the realisation,
That nothing has made him happy in a while,
His foggy senses do nothing to warn him of danger,
As he reaches for the next drink in line.
The man is numb, he no longer feels,
The light of his life is now dead and gone,
He has nothing to live for, nothing to lose,
He gets the gun out of his drawer.
The girl looks at herself in the bathroom mirror,
Her eyes red and puffy from her crying,
She lets out one last sob for her parents, up in heaven,
Shoves pills down her throat, and says goodbye.
The woman drives faster and faster,
Not caring about her own life,
The only thing she had ever known,
Was how to be a loving wife.
The boy can’t stop, he has another,
He can barely formulate a thought,
He somehow manages to pick up a bottle,
And pour himself another shot.
The man can’t erase the image in his mind,
Of his beautiful wife, who he found dead,
But he thinks of his niece, his mother, his father,
And pulls the gun away from his head.
The girl sits down on the bathroom floor,
Shaking more pills into her hand,
The orphanage’s fervour at clamping down on freedom,
Always made her want to take a rebellious stand.
The woman now unchained from her role as a spouse,
Finds that she is suddenly free,
She is finally able to live life on her own terms,
And the thought gives her a rush of glee.
The following day, the woman and man,
Tried to look for new meaning to their life,
They wiped away tears and pushed away the thoughts,
Of ending their precious lives.
The very same day, in the daily newspaper,
The obituary read:
A boy, nineteen; A girl, sixteen,
Were both, sadly, found dead.
All four of them living their different lives,
Had one single common thread,
They had the freedom to do what they like,
Though two lived and two wound up dead.
The boy was given far too much freedom,
By his parents; who gave him nary a thought,
He did what he pleased, throwing caution to the winds,
And look what that freedom brought.
The man, felt hopeless, without his wife,
And felt no need to live,
But he erased the thought and continued on,
And found freedom where there was none to give.
All the girl wanted was to live a limitless life,
A carte blanche life one might say,
She chose what she thought was her only way to freedom,
To everyone else’s dismay.
The woman was now her very own person,
Something she had never known before,
Once and for all she felt free and awake,
To do everything she wanted and more.
This is a piece I sent for a writing competition in my school. The topic was ‘carte blanche’. Hope you like it:)
UPDATE: I got first place!
