By Jay Gandara
I remember being with my family, in the eternal darkness
Clustered together at peace until I suddenly felt an absurdness.
Rubbing metal grinding at the dirt near my body, I could not break
Instead they picked me up, I lay awake.
In darkness again, and yet I was moving, with humans speaking of money
“oh im gonna get rich” but I didn’t think it was funny.
I ended up being tortured, drilled, stabbed, poked and all
I was now a shiny stone, far from my home, I felt so small.
Lights ever so brightly glistening on my shiny skin
Looking around I could see all of my kin.
I felt like crying inside but nothing came out
I was in a hell, their was no doubt.
A piece of metal stuck around my body
To fit a human finger
Person after person with large amounts of money until someone bought me
I felt so alone and not very free.
Explanation of Poem:
This is a sad narrative/poem on the life of a diamond if it had conscious thoughts being separated from its family and home only to be changed physically, bought for money, and ultimately worn by humans.
Diamonds as many people know, are seen as highly desirable and have a ridiculously high cost. Therefore, I aimed to find out why the demand for essentially a rock is so high when compared to other stones or materials. According to diamond 101, diamonds are held in high demand because there are physiologically wanted by people for gifts, to show appreciation or affection, or merely because jewelry shows desire for oneself. This want for a diamond will always increase the demand side but what else increases the demand. The answer is its rarity. There was a time when diamonds were really rare and thus their supply was low, making the price really high and yet people still wanted them because of their rarity and belief that they were special. It wasn’t until a company in South Africa called De Beers found a huge number of diamonds in the ground which did mean a huge paycheck for this company but would also drastically drop the price of these stones due to the supply dramatically increasing. This could also drive down people’s desire for a diamond since they were no longer rare. Instead, De Beers company only lets a few diamonds go to market to prevent the supply from rising too much and instead keeping the demand in check. To tie this into the world market, is this really fair in terms of saturating what people think to be a rare crystal actually turns out to just be a lie only for diamonds to keep their value and peoples pockets to keep getting deeper. Also, with the rise in fake diamonds due to the price differences and them being synthetic and not natural, is it really needed to keep controlling the world supply of diamonds?
Works Cited:
Neil, Christopher F. “Why Are Diamonds in High Demand?” Diamond101, 15 Oct. 2022, diamond101.com/why-are-diamonds-in-high-demand/.