Hi Saffie
My pet hate is when poems like this haven't been given enough attention - some just slip under the radar, don't they? Anyway.....

I think what strikes me about the first stanza is that it is clearly about a child - and when a child is as unhappy as this passage of writing suggests, it's never healthy or happy, is it? "...a heavy burden in her heart." The wording is extremely emotive; no child should have such burdens.

The next two lines introduce a dark and forbidding possibility as to the outcome of this story; where is this girl, especially considering the first stanza?

Then again, stanza three, that feeling of dread increases: a mother holding her daughter more tightly than usual - protectively, perhaps, considering what she may have heard on the news.

Then, "my friend was famous" - whatever has happened to this girl, she has made the news and, again, considering what goes before, as a reader you cannot help but begin to feel an awful well of darkness build. This cannot be good now, can it?

"crowds of people placing flowers and cards around the gates of our school yard."
And then it hits. This girl, for whatever reason, seems to have died. Considering her misery, suicide is the only thing that comes to mind at this time.

And what a powerful last stanza. while not confirming what the girl has died from, her death is confirmed here and again, I as the reader, am drawn to it being suicide, although the dark secrets she harbours could be a violent parent? Assuming suicide, nothing is as heart breaking as a child feeling that's her only release.

A sad and moving write, Saffie, brilliantly executed. Left a lump in my throat.
Take care,
Ben