Category: 11th

I’m uninspired
This room reeks of creativity gone stale

My eyes have glazed over
Like glass comatose breakable

Magazine clippings litter the floor
Fragmented memories of places I’ve been

Carefully cut with kid-scissors
God forbid I wrinkle such sacred memories

Of when smiling fit my lips
And rainy days meant dancing in puddles

A suitcase has
No purpose but to taunt me

To egg me on-
It’s waiting for me

“Where are you going? ”
“I see the light has lost you”

This room is cluttered
I really should clean it

To ward off the abstract implications
That cling to tangible objects

But for now my eyes droop
My posture wavers

And I return to the mattress that so trustingly
Holds my weight

---

McCallum High School

11

When I first saw the sun, it was
Blocked by a policeman’s steely gaze.
Right then and there,
My destiny was realized for me.
I stumbled on tiny paws through the first weeks, nudged by
Gentle, calloused hands
Toward my training.

Those calloused hands led me
To great joy and great confusion.
While they fed me treats, they also
Pushed me through strange tunnels
And made me run across
Never-ending lawns of new, green grass that smelled like freedom,
but were interrupted by fences.
What was the goal?

The obstacles got more intense, more rigorous, more frightening,
But those hands led me through them,
Repeating steps with bottomless
Patience
Until I got it right. I was a smart one,
He said. A good boy.
I was taught
to withstand the BANG of a gunshot,
The writhing of strange men,
The taste of blood in my mouth.
I was taught to protect my friend at all costs.
I would die for him.

His hands smelled like
The contraption at his side,
The awful, loud thing that
I had to get used to. He also smelled like a child, of baby powder and
Cereal.
The tiny one
Was often unpredictable, either
Screaming,
Pulling my ears,
Or burbling the same nonsense my friend did, an odd language of malformed syllables and long phrases, all nonsense.
Whatever the tiny thing did, though,
My friend always held it in his arms and
In his heart.
The tiny one smelled an awful lot like him.

His shirts were often heavy with the scent of ash.
The female inhaled fire,
Flicking gray flakes into the wind.
I smelled his displeasure at the smoke,
But there was love beneath it,
Fire beneath the the ash.
I saw their embraces, relished
The gentle scratches she gave me
Around my ears, the bacon she
Snuck me. She was my second star
In the sky, always next to my friend and the tiny one.
I would do anything to make them shine.

He became my partner,
Working with me, feeding me, teaching me, and loving me
Unconditionally.
Even when I did something wrong,
He would always forgive me.
His metallic hands and burning shirts
Would run up against me as he
Took me into his arms. Bursts of happiness, haphazard and
Sensational,
Exploded in my head, and I would
Wriggle with joy.

I was his, and he was mine.
We were warriors, fighting together
And understanding one another.
As I grew, he grew.
Soon, we were riding around at top speed, chasing people
Who wanted to hurt my others.
I would run then down,
bring them to the ground before
They could hurt anyone.

Now, though…
I didn’t know where he was.
I hadn’t seen him since the last
Dark alleyway, the last gunshot.
I hadn’t seen him for a while.
I remembered chasing someone,
Yelling, so much yelling,
And my friend falling to the ground.
I smelled blood.
It smelled an awful lot like him.

He fell,
And I ran to lick his face.
He made such terrible noises.
I smelled awful, deep pain.
I frantically licked his face,
Trying to take it away.
It worked when he was sad.
Would it work now?
He stopped groaning, just long enough to laugh, to pet me.
Eyes sparkling, he hugged me close.
He went still, and the pain was gone.

I greeted his friends
With a wagging tail,
For he was okay. He was asleep.
For some reason, they too began to make unsettling noises,
Crying out in some broken emotion.
Why were they sad?
He was asleep.

I haven’t seen him since,
Now, I’m in a dry field.
The female smells awful,
Like she has a hole full of festering fruit in her chest. The fire in her is Toxic.
The tiny one is as confused as me.
Why are we in a field full of old stones and dry bones, surrounded by my friend’s friends?
I start to shift with anticipation, growing restless. Is he coming to meet us?
The air is thick with rot.
Crystalline droplets fall down
The female’s chin, and she is shaking.
She sees something, and she crumples to her knees.
The tiny one doesn’t understand,
So he too begins to cry. What is wrong with his mother? I am worried, for the rot inside her grows.

Before I can get to her,
I smell him. I jerk up, sniffing the wind.
He’s finally here!
I dash toward the smell, ignoring
The cries of the female,
And run toward him.
There he is!
There are men carrying a box,
Large men with weeping hearts.
Why is he in a box?

He is okay, right? He is a warrior,
Just like me.
His gentle hands raised me to be strong like him.
His love guided me to adulthood.
I need him. He is my life, my heart.
Why is he in a box?

---

Rouse High School

11

Her eyes send an echo through the room,
And I am stricken by the emptiness
I find in myself as she
Rings through my chest.
Clear as a bell, she rings.

Her lips are pink, soft and sweet.
Bubblegum lips and a smile of spun sugar
That I want to taste.
I want her to linger on my tongue,
To dissolve with a slow tingle and swirl in my stomach.

Her clothes are a sunbeam,
She wears so much yellow.
Warm honey yellow, sunflower yellow, lemon yellow,
She is sunlight shining through the last sips of
Whiskey, languid and warm, intoxicating.

Her mind is chaotic,
So many things bouncing around at once.
Illustrations flow through her veins in a
River of ink, schoolwork popping in her mind in splotches of red pen.
And pain.
Her pain cuts me when we embrace. I can’t help feeling it.

Her eyes echo in my mind,
Her lips give me a sugar high,
Her sunshine intoxicates me,
And her pain cuts deep into me.
I think I might be in love.

---

Rouse High School

11

I feel lost
When I stare out my window
There’s so much space to lose myself
It’s claustrophobic, stifling.

Why am I doing this?
Losing sleep over things I was taught to stress over
And hating myself for slipping lower.
I just want to do what’s right.
Give back to my family and secure a future
Shine bright and have a place to sleep at night.

I tell myself that I do not need to feel
That I can kill myself a little bit
I mute my mind and let my brain do the talking
But then it really feels like dying.

I have so many reasons to feel grateful
And I really do, always
But you tell me to wait.
When you really want me to forget
Slowly, letting my spirit grow old.

You tell me to wait
“Your hard work now will pay off later”
It’ll get easier
Once you learn to let go.
And replace all the things you used to care about
With the notions you’re sold.

When I let my thoughts roam freely
They remind me of truer things.
I look down at my hands and wonder what I’m doing
Motivation is just shutting out memories of happiness
And convincing myself I’ll relearn it with practice.
But I didn’t start broken, so why do I need fixing now?
What have you taught me to break me?
What poison have I been fed to need an antidote?
The prescriptions you wrote
Never heal where it hurts.

When you look in the mirror do you become transparent
Too?
Your ghost soul can’t save me as I grow old
Like you.

Are you happy?
We really are a family.

---

LC Anderson High School

11

The mellow
disturbing
lack of sound
within
the
outskirts
Of The
black
Hole
Made
Manny
Shake
vigorously
His
Face
Tensed
his
Eyebrows
Twitched and
An
Exodus Of
Sweat
Excreted
Out of
His pores
His
Vocal Cords
Were
Overworked
To
The
Point
Where If
There Was Sound
In Space
His Scream
Would Be
Heard
Throughout The Galaxy
Manny’s hands
Elongated
To
The
Point
Where
His Eyes
Couldn’t Even
See
His
fingertips
He
Never
Thought
That
In His Lifetime
He Would
Experience The
Feeling Of
10,000
Bullet Ants
on
Each Square
Inch
Of His Skin
Yet
This Was
His
Punishment For
a
t
t
e
m
p
tin
g
t
o
e
s
c
a
p
e
T
h
e
C
o
n
fin
e
sO
f
N
o
r
t
h
K
o
r
e
a
.

---

James Bowie High School

11

Inte är det kusligt?
Att att växa upp med en familj precis för att bo med andra?
Trots allt tiden som du har spenderat till bättre själv för att din familj precis ska flytta sig på till andra?
Kanske att flytta familjer var till bättre själv.
Kanske ska du realisera hur mycket dig riktigt omsorg för din familj, när du kopplar.
Eller när de flyttar sig till ett olikt land.
Du berättar sig att det var precis så du kunde avsluta högstadiet.
Men var den egentligen? Var det den verkliga anledningen?
Svaret är inte.
Den verkliga anledningen var att du inte kunde behandla att älskas och att önskas, når den har omgivits av men och misströsta din hela barndom.
Du kunde inte förstå därför någon kunde älska dig.
Eller därför de.
Du försökte allt i din makt att få i väg från all saker som dig, drog tanke dig ner.
När i verkligheten, det var vad som drogs dig upp.
Du realiserade precis det, då det var för sent.

Isn’t it weird?
To grow up with one family just to live with another?
After all the time you’ve spent to better yourself for your family to just move on to another?
Maybe moving families was to better yourself.
Maybe you’ll realize how much you truly care for your family when you switch.
Or when they move to a different country.
You tell yourself it was just so you could finish high school.
But was it really? Was that the real reason?
The answer is no.
The real reason was that you couldn’t handle being loved and wanted after being surrounded by hurt and despair your whole childhood.
You couldn’t understand why anyone could love you.
Or why they would.
You tried everything in your power to get away from all the things you thought were pulling you down.
When in reality, it was what pulled you up.
You just realized it when it was too late.

---

Stony Point High School

11

In a freezing Costco I look for
the warm orange
of some freshly harvested
pumpkin
or the deep smell of dried hay.

Out of the window I imagine
a tiny car and immeasurable
countryside,
but I just see boundless
streets and intrusive trucks.

Pale places
used to bored me
in my memories now
I’m intrigued by their joyful color.

Family
an expert puppet master that
used to suffocate me,
now I search for them
in my dreams.

Voices
were loud and oppressive
a barking noise
now I can hear them calling from afar
like Ulysses’s mermaids never-ending song
imploring to go home.

My stomach is full of stones,
there’s a weight in my lungs,
Not air,
but
nostalgia.

---

James Bowie High School

11

The sand and dirt hit my face
As I stepped into a mysterious place
One from a memory long, long ago
From a place where the wind never blows
The sand was a fiery field on hot summer days
Where you could only really sit and gaze
At an unforgiving place that was never home
And think through the possibilities and roam
I saw trees with birds that flew so high
Twinkling in that same summer sky
But in a different place that I could see
A little girl finally full of glee
Through adventures and car rides that lasted days
I found this peace in unfortunate ways
But the end was blissful and finally I
Found the place where I could touch the sky

---

James Bowie High School

11