Author: Maple W.

When you wake up you smell your favorite breakfast you walk in the kitchen and your mom says ‘happy Birthday sweetie’ ‘thank you’ you say it looks like she has been up for hours for you. You go get on your special birthday outfit. You go in the kitchen and breakfast is ready you eat breakfast together you say ‘I love you mom’ I love you too.”

---

Barton Hills Elem

5

You still smells the way you did then

Stuffed in a draw put away
Forgotten

Darkness kept the hunter green and silver from mellowing
when the four of us relocated

The white walls and furniture
no variety in a never ending color

The smell of chep cleaner lingered
It was once your house
I rescued you from a trash can when we finally moved

You were a secret grandma and I kept
for over ten years
Only we knew that you hid
in the empty guest bathroom drawer

I knew exactly what you were

In a way your a stand in for my grandfather

Did you know that you ran away and got married to your high school sweetheart
And you ran one of the best home remodeling companies Houston, Texas had ever seen.

As an infant I have been told stories that I would only speak gibberish to you

No one in this world can ever call me Lizzy but you
Betty never did remarry
She didn’t even date

Until then
You’re in my closet
Kept hidden until I forget
Or leave

---

James Bowie High School

11

A sharp snap against the cracked concrete.
My body veers to the left at street sign,
the city still hasn’t come out to fix the half bent
Hillside Terrace.
Tall homes loom over my shrunken form.
A single pale light illuminates from a window
a woman hunches over a bright screen.

Lime-green shorts
dance through the front yards and lawn gnomes,
Through the flower beds and twinkling christmas lights.

Shoes
smack, echo through cul-de-sacs,
the only sound for miles and yet it’s still too loud.

A lonely bark from a nearby house,
maybe it can sense something
is happening, like how dogs can sense earthquakes.

Or maybe it wants to feel the freedom I’m feeling, sprinting
despite the stitch in my side, running through the solemn streets
and breathing life into the rising sun.

Slowing down a breath fills my lungs.

It’s just me, the lady, and the dog

to witness what happens every morning since forever.

A cold stillness that washes away with the wind. And with the blink of an eye it’s gone.
People wake up, drink coffee, and go to work.

They drive into the sunrise only to go to another place that is only slightly interesting.
And when they come home the

icy veil layers over the world once again.

---

James Bowie High school

11

Clarity is frosted glass,
You can see the imprint of what’s in front of you
But it’s distorted.
Incoherent.
Is it even really there?
I see what my brain preserves is on the other side,

But what if my brain is wrong?
Seeing what it wants to see.
Seeing what I fear to see.
Seeing myself alone,
No one there to support me,
No one there to comfort me,

Just me and my glass,
That’s useless.
It’s frosted over,
The same way my heart is.

Maybe this is it,
Clarity is something I can’t obtain.
Something so essential, yet so foreign.

Do you see what I see through that frosted glass?
Do you see your family in tears, waving goodbye?
Do you see yourself alone?

---

James Bowie High School

11

It’s hard to put all the memories into paper.
There just aren’t enough words in the world.
All of them together
could not describe
how beautiful it used to be
to feel completely destroyed,
and yet,
to be more alive then ever.

There just aren’t enough words in the world
to describe the way you made me feel,
or to express how much I loved you.

Language isn’t enough
to take the images and rip them apart
into something beautiful
so you can be able to see them.

Words are the limit.

And I’m sure I can tell you
that there isn’t enough time either,
to sing everything out loud
or to do it all over again.

It’s just impossible.

So it tears me into pieces
knowing that what happened happened,
and it will only live inside me,
as a memory.
Hunting me,
because nobody will ever know,
and nobody will ever understand
how it is that this thing inside of me
has the power to slowly
slowly
slowly
burn out my little human soul.

---

James Bowie High School

11

As I stare outside
cars passing
rain slowly falling outside the window
I tune back into the world

It’s a little after seven
I was young
uninformed of global current events
which lead me to believe that NPR
was an entire radio station
created to torture kids of my age
while on long car trips.
It was then that I began to pay attention
to my mother
who was currently showering me in praise
as she haphazardly
pulled into the parking lot of my elementary school.
Slick with the remnants of the previous night’s rain.
Brycen, Mrs. Champion tells me
that you’re an incredible student,
kind, attentive, and cute too.
She says as she reaches over to put her hand on my face.
Being a young boy at risk
of being seen with his mother by his fellow classmates
I was quick to dismiss her affection.
God Mom, I get it! Can I go now!
She stared at me
Her face blank
used to this sort of reaction by now
waiting a few seconds before responding.
You know,
you’re gonna talk that way to the wrong person one of these days
and get your butt beat
I hear her
unaware of the incredible amount of leniency
I have been given

---

James Bowie High School

12

A red dress,
Unconfined in the wind’s grasp.
Whipping like ocean waves,
Hugging her torso.

A runaway,
Atop a mountain cliff,
Abandoned.

Lost souls,
Grotesque and decaying,
Wear red.

A vibrant cry for help,
Craving attention.
Princes with white horses,
Never come.

A damsel in distress,
Her mind floods with misconception,
No savior in sight.

The bold statements,
Like a false smile,
Conceal broken minds.

---

James Bowie High School

11

All eyes on you
All eyes on you
The girl with the curly black hair sitting all alone
She’s the one with the attitude.
The girl who’s always never talking but the one
Who deep inside she has a voice.
When I look at her, I see a leader — someone that
Can speak her mind.
But sees all the discrimination in these hallways
The girl with the curly black hair
The girl that everyone looks at but never talks to
Her pride is inspirational the way she walk with her smirk.

---

LBJ High School

10

The teddy bear
soft with brown fur,
frowning with sadness,
as his beady glass eyes,
staring at me,

Asking:
“Why haven’t you played with me?
Why don’t we talk?”

To be honest I forgot
about him just like I forgot
the stuffed elephant
the Giraffe and even the monkey.

But the bear-
he was special,
He was there everyday
for every year,
when I was crying,
when I was bored,
when I needed a friend.

Until he wasn’t.

Then I had a new companion
Not a friend.
Not someone I love.
But is required to be with me.
My future requires him.
My happiness later
in life depends on him.

It has many layers,
homework, teachers,
peer pressure and bullying,
stress and anxiety.
It is so much
I almost hate it.

But it brings me no joy,
not like the teddy bear-
who slumps down,
worn apart by age,
frizzing at the end
of his feet, fading
under the shadow
of my past.

As its little ear is holding on
by the threads,
so is everything
in my life,
coming apart
every day I age.

---

James Bowie High School

12