12 to 14-year-old winners

“Space”
By Ruby Rowan-Decker

Space
You take up so much space
Sometimes sunshine,
sometimes rain

Now
I’m drained
You train
Them to follow
And wallow
And weep when you do
To cut their words for yours
To slip and seep into
The cracks.
Take it back.
I didn’t mean to.

Space
I take up too much space
Replace me with you.
Us two
To
One,
One half,
Halved again
I’m spend
-ing
All my energy
On you.

Space
It takes up too much space
You say.
Cutting down trees
Houseless species
Now unknown

For you
Is it true?
The blame
His hold on you?
Calling counterfeit
Only made to fit
Behind you.

Space
There’s no more space.
Falter and fall out of
place
Packages,
Boxes,
Boxing up,
Selling this space
For new
One without
You.

Space
This space is mine.
Letters sit in place.
Unsent but not erased.
I miss your sunshine
face,
Your rain,
Your wallow.
My space
Almost hollow.
‘Till

A letter today.
From sunshine
and rain.
Melancholy not
drained.
I love that you’re still
the same
Maybe one day
Or space will measure the same.

 

“the early morning’s collection”
By Lennon Phillips

doves, sparrows, the rising sun
walking through fog, dewy grass,
deep breaths, crisp air, swerving for frogs
not knowing

listening closely, arranging my thoughts,
unbroken flowing on the riverbed
rocking chairs, blueberry pancakes, bad coffee
the moon in the daytime, car trips
laundromats, the woods, the light of an old candle
what will vanish

15 to 18-year-old winners

“How Are You?”
By Raquel Mazur

I miss them at 10:14
When train goes by
A whizz of wonder passes through my mind
How are you?

I miss them at 2:56
Staring at the mirror
Envisioning what life would be like
How are you?

I miss them at 5:38
My brain wanders away
Your name in the distance
How are you?

I miss them at 7:46
Tea flowing down my throat
Worry lingers on my tongue

how are you?

 

“an ode to deerfield”
By Anna Guerrini

in a rainy town in the middle of nowhere
it will never rise high above the 50s, but it’s pretty
rare for it to drop too far below freezing at night.
so we are plagued by a perpetual state of mud through spring and summer and
autumn and winter because the snow will melt and the leaves will fall but
there will be mud on the ground and mud tracks its way onto unpaired socks.
down to the laundry rooms shivering in the unheated basement for an hour or
two listening to music, changing, loading, folding, bringing loads up one two three
four flights into a dingy room but a room with a view to the field that adores every
sunkissed leaf or fog tinted morning.
the highway isn’t quite too loud except in the morning where it and the running of
the river are the only things to hear so it seems like a thousand cars are rolling by
that deserted farm road that you could ride all the way to the sea if you wanted to
but it seems like things are far too chilly.
you could take it to the coffee shop with the good chocolate chip cookies
but we will never muster up the courage or the time to leave a couple square
miles of paradise.
paradoxes like how can the kid who led debate fell from grace while the swim
team makes it to nationals again and someone sprains their leg and
another sprains their relationship (he bought him flowers, they got back
together).
if our newspaper were accurate (which it has every right to be, considering the
blood sweat and tears we pour into our monthly load of kindling)
it would include all of our melodrama but alas, it only included events worthy of
attention, not the sticky note someone left on the fridge that said “free orange
juice” that made her day or that time someone placed his laundry on the table in
the laundry room instead of the dusty ground. that stuff that says the other end of
the line didn’t pick up when they called home so they decided to spend the day
throwing snow in people’s beds for a laugh or the kind of conversation that
happens when a kid who can barely notice to orange leaves
looks up to see a teacher waving ‘hi!” so they look back down and wonder if they
could have cereal at dinner (and did i take my meds?).
unhinged like a door frame that we claim is our history on the mass graves of a
twenty pioneer children killed and no one can really say it was wrong.
pray tell, why do you wake up at 7:30 and put on blazer and a necklace and
drunk smiles or why you throw on sweat pants and down an energy drink with a
side of suicide note and tell me how’s your new workout going?
Well, of course, because you are the future leaders of the free world or
something like it.
in a quiet, rainy town that never gets quite above fifty degrees the future lawyers
and doctors look up at night to posters of movies and books and
countries and homes. they go to sleep waiting for a text message from moms
and dads but know they are asleep by now so the future politicians and
professors wait desperately for their friends from home to text them back.
wondering if they carelessly traded their memories, “remember our galveston
trip?” for their destiny.
in a quiet town where the highway very well could go to the sea but stops by the
creek, at which it turns into a dirt road that you need to climb to get to the only
book store around, a kid looks at a picture of her friends 14 th birthday party
surrounded by printed photos of dogs and and family and honor roll certificates
and midnight photoshoots and lacy hearts and bible verses and to-do lists and
pictures from her first communion and the world blends to form everywhere
(there) and anywhere (here) tacked onto the corkboard above her desk. trying to
figure out where home and by effect the heart is as we track bloody wheelmarks
through the airport, veins and arteries dripping from our suitcases.
in a quiet, rainy town full of adults trying to pretend they don’t feel like toddlers
dressing up in (mandatory) suits, ties, and dresses, changing their light bulbs,
losing their keys, finding jobs and taking calculus like real men,
the stars are awful bright at night, once the fog and the drizzling clears up.
so bright they keep half the school awake every full moon.
and every once in a while, a girl who is told every day that she is a woman looks
up at them while taking out the recycling.
she looks up and she looks down and she thinks of the shipping box rocket ships
she made in elementary school, before things became irreversible?
before words like “parliamentary” and “red bull” and “inculcate” and “tricyclic” and
“differential” and “baroque” and “bathroom duty” and “faggot” and “clique” kept
her up at night.
but what kept her up was the shipping box rocket ship and the promise to herself
that she would be an astronaut someday.
in a quiet, rainy town in the middle of a forest where settlers lost their prosperity
to the cold winters, it stops raining for a while.
beneath the light of a new moon and a computer screen a boy tapes a sign
above his bed reading “you will send mankind to the stars” before the rain picks
up again, and he, quietly, falls asleep.

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