By Mac Meredith, Liam Kyle, Asher Kyle, Tristan Young, John Womack, Andrew Womack
By Margo Windemuller
In the beginning
Of me; of you
Of all things loving
And loved
We cried drops of sand.
And one of us
Felt the pain
Felt the scratching
And crumbled down to chalk
Losing every assurance
The other of us
Thought oneself free
And laughed with joy
While marching a path
Of erroneous beauty
See how our disbelief
Limits yet extends
Your ability to be hopeless
And mine to pine hopelessly
But now conquered by saudade;
When time became nothing
And nothing became everything
Fire became our subjects
And glass, our castle
Though a throne of shard and dust
Holds not even a tear.
By Margo Windemuller
Imagine having to go to school
Imagine walking in
And saying ‘hello’ to
That one person
Who just happened to catch
Your eye
You covet what isn’t yours
And you hope in vain that
You could be enough
That you could speak
Imagine sitting down in class
And pulling out only one
Half filled sheet of paper
And writing solely notes
And then you look down
And you see no calluses
It’s all because of you;
You chose the days
Of loneliness without
Being alone
Imagine swiveling around
Your mouth wide open ready
To whisper what your mind
Screams for that one person who
Happened to catch
Your eye
But then you slit the throat
Of your conscious, still stupidly
Wanting, pleading, begging
For a single thought
Imagine not going to school at all
Imagine staying in bed
And never even thinking about
Saying ‘hello’ to that one person
Who just so happened to
Look at you
And smile.
And you still cannot
Begin to comprehend
That you aren’t
Imagining it at all
By Margo Windemuller
I feel overheard
I feel the thoughts
I overhear
The slights of a faucet drip
The oily escape of eggs burning
The shameless kettle
Waiting to burn
The kitchen gossip.
By Ella Green
I wandered into the woods for a while.
I walked away from civilization
And into the welcoming green world,
The forest before my eyes
And beneath my feet,
Rich with raw beauty
And overflowing with purity.
I pet the tree’s fur,
The fluffy, fuzzy moss,
I collected some leaf skeletons,
I sang into the sky,
The trees perking up their leaves to listen,
And I laughed and threw up my arms,
Opening myself like a flower
In the spotlight of the sun on the trail.
I stepped onto wide roots
And saw a small snail slowly crawling across the earth,
Leaving behind slime that sparkled in the sun.
Her journey through life is one of slow savoring.
I could learn from her—
I think we all could.
What is wrong with wandering?
To wander
Is to welcome wonder
Into your heart.
Race Against the Sun
A heart without blood races
A pale figure running by
The Gold creeps over the darkened horizon
Into the alleys
Into the dark that remains
The last protection from blazing fire fading
A race against the sun
A curse of the immortal
The Gold leaks through any and all openings
Dodging through shadows
Dipping into dark salvation
The feeling of long lost salvation sinks in
Out of room
Out of time
The Gold leaks over insufficient walls
Skin as pale as powder burns slowly
The impending pain has finally come
And a life that has lasted far too long has finally met its end
Burn
Red consumes my vision
A sickly smell arises
Towers find themselves enveloped in a boiling embrace
Unwilling to cease in its grasp
It absorbs the life of all it is around
A city of life turning to ash just as fast as the earth turns
A figure remains unwavering in the center
Familiar notes play through a violin
Avaritia ardet dum te necat
Greed burns until it kills you
Play oh foolish king and watch your people burn
Autumnal Chill Turns Icey
The autumn breeze is here
For the short life it breathes
Sweaters find themselves warmed once more with bodies
Quickly it comes fighting away a humid heat
Yet quicker it ceases
A once pleasant breezes turn icey
My nose grows red
My teeth begin to chatter
And yet again another blanket appears in my bed
For the second time this year.
By Ella Green
All day
I glide
Through the shallow waters,
My body wading
Under the sun’s wandering,
Burning,
Blinding,
Blazing bright
Among the golden stalks.
Once
I watched his fingers touch and caress
The baby deer’s head,
Speckled with tiny white stars,
And it was beautiful, oh,
I have given up
Trying to fight
My indecisiveness
On all the many things
I could not live without!
The precious creature
Will soon dance away to find her friends
In their palace of green,
Soon,
The night will paint its darkness
And sprinkle star sparkles on the leaves,
And before that,
Will be thoroughly cleansed
In the bold, brazen burst of light,
The last rays
Of the day.
I want to flood out
Across the waters,
Lay on my back,
Floating for hours.
I want to forget what fear is,
I want to remember what faith is,
I want to release the needles of anxiety stuck in my skin
And understand what trust is.
I want to forget about myself
On the black and ruffled blankets of the billowy waters.
I hold a cluster of lilies to my heart
And close my eyes,
Overflowing with yellow light,
And I shed a tear.
Now I sleep.
By Jacob Davick
The world is full of danger and pain. I've known that for a long time. I think that belief started in my childhood. My childhood was not difficult but it was preventative. I learned of the dangers of the world but not in dangerous ways, I would learn the small lessons that applied to bigger dangers. I am able to avoid many hard things in life through the lessons that these small things in my childhood have taught me, and I am glad that I got an amount of freedom to explore the world a little and play around with it. I would learn things through experience rather than being told. Instead of my parents telling me to not play in the front yard without shoes, I would just get poked a few times and learn the lesson the real way.
The front yard was a fun place to play. It wasn't that big but it was big enough to play a few games. It was an L shape but the main part we used was the big rectangle. The brick sidewalk traveled like a river cutting a country in two. One side had more vegetation than the other, and three trees acted as cover during a battle. It ended at the gate of the fence like a river leads to the ocean. The plastic white fence separated the yard and the street but it wasn’t hard to get a ball in the road. I could even fit in between the fence posts. Balls would fly right through. We weren't allowed to go in the street to get the balls, for good reason. I can’t learn that one the real way. The road on the side of our house was pretty busy, but the road in front of our house was safer because it was a dead end. We would play basketball in that street. We got really good at reading blinkers. We had to tell whether a car was going to turn in the dead end in the middle of our basketball game.
I wasn't that scared of the road, but I was scared of the pokey leaves. We had this nice tree in the corner that had berries on it which I don't think were edible but I always loved to squish them. For some reason God created these trees with leaves that had thorns on them. Maybe this is to protect them from some animal, bird, or insect but all it did was keep me out of the front yard. These pokey leaves would land all over the yard turning it into a minefield. As an, almost, adult I know that this tree was just an American Holly. This tree is all over the southeast corner of America. I'm glad it stayed in the corner of the yard. There were some parts of the yard that were safe from the pokey leaves but the majority of the front yard was a danger zone. If you didn’t have shoes on, these leaves could ruin your fun outside. I would be coming around the house through the back gate and I would feel a small needle poke into my foot. Immediately I would lift that foot up and start jumping. I would jump into another leaf and I would have to eject the leaf from my foot like I was a WWII soldier clearing a piece of shrapnel from his body. I would suck up the pain because I had to make it to the sidewalk. I’m the youngest sibling, so no one is coming to save me from my injury in the middle of the yard. It is my job to get to safety. I hop carefully to the sidewalk avoiding the inevitable fate of the pokey leaves. When I finally made it I would take the other leaf out and walk inside leaving a small blood stain on the brick sidewalk to mark the tragedy that happened that day. I would make sure to wear shoes the next day.
There were some strategies to avoid these. The obvious answer is to wear shoes but I would forget about those maybe a week after I got poked. You could check every step twice before you make it to see if there is a leaf there. The best is after my dad mowed the lawn. All the leaves are shredded and I could walk freely in my own front yard with no fear of any leaves in my way. You could stay on the sidewalk because it would be clear where the leaves are, and the wind blows them right off. Except in the summer when the bricks turned into hot coals. I remember my brother and I would see who could keep their feet on the burning hot brick the longest. That is when I got used to failure, accepting loss isn’t the only lesson I learned though.
These little things in the front yard taught me how to be aware of my surroundings. They taught me to take in the information around me and tell for myself whether something is safe or not. I had to know how hard I could throw the ball without it going through the fence. I had to learn how to tell whether a car was coming towards us playing basketball. I had to watch every single step that I took to make sure I didn't step on those pokey leaves, and I have to go through life taking each step thinking of how those steps might hurt me. These simple objects in my front yard have changed my mindset of how I go about my life. I am cautious of every little thing that my actions could affect. I'm much more careful about what I say, who I say it to, and how I say it. Now I believe that living a life of kindness isn't about doing a bunch of kind acts, it's about constantly not doing any mean acts. Every step I take either in my front yard or in life I have to be watching for those pokey leaves.
By Lincoln Hughes
In the garden of promises,where vows once bloomed
A brides departure, a silent, somber truth
Her feet once stepped a slow song dance
Now she's somewhere, not heard to man
Hard to accept, but easy to remember,
The song we used to play over and over;
Yet in the fragments of love's shattered art
New chapters may open, new memories made
For in every ending, a beginning is started
A new story starts with a setting sun
