Marie-Thérèse

Lehna Estes

Massachusetts

16

Marie-Thérèse 

My name is shared with a noblewoman. 

She is French, 

(which I am only barely)

and died a miserable death,

alone in a house in Austria. 

I read that the younger one was imprisoned for a while, 

and she had not known that her 

family was already dead. 

On the walls of her cell, 

she scratched a message, 

begging to know what happened. 

Begging, like a prayer to see her mother,

Oh my God! she tore into the wall. 

A prayer that would fall on deaf ears.

And like a martyr,

(because God always answers a martyr’s prayer) 

forgive those who have made my parents suffer. 

She was no martyr. 

The prayer went unanswered. 

I find it important to say that I don’t harbor any connection to her. 

She died long ago, 

and I feel neither pity nor anger towards her, 

I don’t think I ever will. 

I do however wonder from time to time 

what it would be in her position. 

I wonder what it would be like to scratch that prayer into the wall.