By Marylen Boehm
By Sophie Howard
You tell me a secret
You say I can never repeat.
But what if this secret leaves scars,
What if it bleeds,
In my heart?
What if it burns,
In my mind,
What if I have to tell someone in order for it to die?
Because I want this secret to die.
I want it gone and I wish I never heard it.
I don’t want to be a part of it.
Burning in my head, bleeding in my heart, scarring on my arm - I can’t take it anymore.
I tell.
I told the secret you told me to keep, I feel better, and now I can sleep.
Sure I was an adult but you always made me feel like I was 15.
Lesser than you and lesser than everyone.
Why did you have to tell me?
Was it burning you too?
Was your heart bleeding too?
Did it scar you too?
Did I scar, did I burn, did I help bleed someone else now?
Maybe I should have left it be so no more people would have to bleed,
Would have to burn,
Would have to scar,
The way we did.
Never tell me a secret
That I cannot keep.
By Logan Roy
Ah, yes,
A deep breath,
In
And then out.
The warmth of sunbeams
Piercing the chill of a worried heart.
The passionate kiss of the extravagant sunrise
Painting the horizon.
The sweet brush of a warm breeze
Across an anxious face.
The sweet aroma of loved ones
Maybe far away, but always near.
The lovely touch of one special person,
Sending giddy electricity into the soul.
The ever so gentle aura of peace,
The calm after a fierce gale,
The serenity of a quiet lake,
The bristling of autumn leaves.
Oh how my restless spirit years for three!
Your World - Clara Monahan
Mellow wavy hair
Trickling down your spine
Messy coated desk
Of papers filled with lines
You flicker upon new tabs
Catering to your desire
Turn your head and think
Of all thou do admire
Your river eyes ever wander
Like a flowing soft stream
To universes strange
Only found in a dream
Though I cannot see
Your vision through your gaze
Your face twisted still
Says plenty to amaze
So I wonder steadily from afar
To see your mind contemplate
Something other than this essay
This world that you create
By Darby Hood
A scarred plane stretches before me,
Pale and sore,
Groaning under the burden of my gaze.
I make a bid to keep control of it,
To steer the suffering,
But the more I dig my fingers in,
The more it slips away.
And this strange landscape changes in front of me,
Aging beyond its years,
Suffering further under my sorry grasp.
My reach for a grip is fruitless,
And my hold slipping,
The furrows made by my flailing hands grow deeper.
I snap back, move away from the mirror,
And I cringe.
By Ella Goodyear
his voice is a burning fire
bright enough to blind you from the grass beneath your feet
fragile blades breaking beneath your leaps
they are the very strings that weave my soul
the child’s blanket at your feet
laying unraveled before you
but the glare is fierce so you don’t see the difference
when you reach for it it still touches you the same
maybe even softer now
as if it puts in all its warmth to call to you
screaming grasping
i need warmth too
but flames crackle louder than you remembered
and you like it better that way
his voice is a burning fire
mine fades into the smog
By Almeda Pitts
A sort of admiration.
Unhealthily, an idolization.
I feel kinda immature next to you,
It’s not like it’s anything you were trying to do.
You’re always right thing, right time,
Right tone,
On the dime.
Right there,
Never behind.
Meanwhile, I’m losing my patience.
I say the right thing,
Wrong tone.
My patience?
On loan,
In debt.
Expectations?
Never met.
Cut off: jeans and sentences, both by me
Despite how hard I’m trying.
Time is flying,
Slipping through my fingers like sand,
Into the bottom of the hourglass.
It’s all I can do to watch it pass.
By Logan Roy
I don't even know what to say.
This month has stretched me in ways I cannot yet fathom,
And tugged at the core of my soul in a way not much else has.
Can words even begin to describe what has happened?
How I’ve changed?
What I’ve learned?
Yes. Yes, they can.
And that is what I have learned:
All they need is someone willing to write them.
Well, here I am!
And as long as I live
The pen in my hands will not rest,
Nor the keyboard underneath my eager fingers.
This great realization is what has carried me through this trying time,
For while my soul is being tugged,
I can spin words to soar above the pain,
And while my being is being stretched to its limits,
I can write sonnets to stitch my wounds.
So yes, it may be true now that I don't know what to say,
But the thing is, eventually,
I will.
And breathtaking landscapes will be drawn with those words.
By Logan Roy
Rules are not made to be broken,
They are made to be followed
For safety,
Security,
And flourishing.
However,
That is only on paper,
In the best-case scenario,
What they ought to be.
In real life, they can limit,
Suffocate,
And kill.
They can be cold,
Heartless,
Lifeless,
And unfeeling.
Feeling is a necessity.
That is why people remain human.
If you take out the heart,
You take out the soul,
And when you take out the soul,
You become nothing but a shell.
So why have I not stopped writing?
Why haven't I dropped this challenge?
For I should’ve been knocked out a long time ago
Because of what the rules say.
It is because of the words I heard someone else say that someone else said,
“Life happens.”
These rules do not account for life,
They know not the man with the keyboard,
Or the woman with the pen,
All they know is what they were told to say.
I am still here because life happens,
And I still want to write.
By Sophia Dowling
