Selina Kao

As I sat at the kitchen table delicately picking at some fries, I recognized the sound of my mother’s slipper-laden footsteps as she crept into the room.

Trying to ignore the palpable judgment, I tentatively reached for another fry as she casually remarked, “你太胖了.” You are too fat. Concern undergirding her voice, she cautioned, “你不能吃那么多.” You can’t eat that much.

And the phenomenon of Chinese parents habitually commenting on appearance is nothing out of the ordinary. 

Andrew Enock

To master the illusion of light within a painting, is to also have mastered the ability to truly observe and retain the sights that you are seeing. An artist can do their best to mimic the intangibility of light, but the true amazement of light in artwork lays somewhere else in its composition. For the purpose of this piece, I will be analyzing and discussing the different core uses of light from the 17th century and Christian art to the 19th century, Baroque Period, when Romanticism and the worship of the tangible world begin to show in Western Art.

Jessica Rosenblatt

Your peach skin flesh falls slack around the blue veins, tunneling through your hands, smooth, soft and soothing, covered with the deepening canals of your inevitable age. Beyond the break, I held your then somewhat younger hands, clasping under the water when salty sea swilled around my face. Your hands were the anchor for my somewhat smaller body, a vessel of my curiosity.

And sometimes I worried, that the tide would take you away from me..

Jasmin Wu

Every summer, we’d visit when the rousing sun caressed blushing buildings and colored the sparkling air with a flushed haze. Early mornings were a mouthful of spunky street food flavors and, despite Grandma’s chidings to eat slower, buzzing numbness from burning our tongues (Grandma included, to both of our amusements) on stuffed sticky rice rolls and steamed red bean buns. After wiping the crumbs from our mouths and hands amidst our giggles, she’d clasp my chubby hand tightly in hers and lead me through the waking city.

Bill Fitzgerald

'They say that the truest beauty is in the harshest land and that God can be found there by those with open eyes'

-Alice Hoffman

The path down to La Klo is a long one. My little feet throb every few steps, slowly enveloped in the black dirt that runs hot and dry along the Haitian hillsides.

Sophie Kessler

They sat together by the lake.

Anyone would have thought they were siblings, with dark hair and dark eyes and the comfortable atmosphere around them. He held a guitar, his arm draped casually over the side, and he plucked at the strings as they talked.

She loved the sound of the guitar. She always had liked it, but it was like one day she had woken up with a new passion for it. She had been hanging out with him more, and his friends, and ever since then she had been surrounded by the beautiful twang of the instrument.

Kayla Santanilla

The Thing About Dandelions

The thing about dandelions,

Is the hope,

The promise of a new start.

I wonder,

Why can a wisp of a flower,

Smaller than the ear of a mouse,

Kayla Santanilla

I wonder what the mountain knows,

After years of being one with the wind.

What stories were whispered

By the flutter of a butterfly’s wing?

Several lifetimes

Of secrets,

Brought in by the call of a crow.

Mia Douglass

When someone forgets

To turn on the light

Things seem to be so dark

Until someone 

Clicks your light

And with a “Snap”

It's gone

Marlo Anonymous

Dear Sesame Street,

 You make us feel good. You have always made us feel good. As the sibling of a 3 year old child addicted to your show, I have watched you lovingly embrace diversity openly. What a refreshing concept it was. Sweet, honest, educational, authentic entertainment for children.You always seemed to get how to discuss diversity without condescension.

Jaden Jacoby-Cooper

Jessie is writing a letter to the admissions officers of their dream college. This is what they had to say:
From the start, I didn’t know where the hell I belonged. ​I probably should delete “hell”. I don’t think the admissions officers would appreciate my stellar word choice. From the start, I didn’t know where I belonged. ​Now the sentence is bland, but the officers aren’t allowed to take points off for that. ​

Mia Douglass

You make me feel as though

My legs are coated

In bliss and clouds

You stretch and stretch

And I am in heaven

The cotton against my skin

Chaya Tong

I know that nature can make things

imperfectly perfect

Like patches of uneven grass

or the crooked grooves of bark

yet still I wonder if

a tree where stub replaces branch

feels incomplete

Jessica Rosenblatt

When I was twelve I believed in God. I believed in candlelight and stained glass windows that projected rays of callously edged shapes on the carpeted floor. Burnt reds and dull ocean greens caressed the boundary where the hardwood met the fraying, tangled strands of shredded carpet. And the light that streams like honeysuckles trickles down. When they told me to encompass the light, I did.

I prayed that I would grow taller. That for my thirteenth birthday present I would surpass 4”5’. Instead, I learned how to mourn a person that wasn’t actually dead. I

Sruthi Kalavacherla

A child’s cry pierced the blue sky. I followed the turn along the unpaved dirt path, the sun relentless as it beat down my back. Gabriela and I were holding onto each other desperately––two among hundreds under the Mexican sun. For the first time in my life, I missed home.

“Mamá, I’m tired,” Gabriela whispered, unable to find her voice. “I hope we can find water soon.”

Gabriela’s bright, inquiring eyes were now blank as she stared into the crowd around us. I ran my fingers through her curly brown hair––the only part of her father she may ever be able to remember.

“Have patience, mija. Our toil will be worth it soon.”

Jessica Dooley

I’m So Sorry

That your race does
Not
Limit your socioeconomic standing

That the accent you speak with does
Not
Negatively impact the way people perceive you

That the place you happened to be born in does
Not
Mean more than where you’re headed

That your religion you choose to practice does

Cody Siegel

At just around twilight
The dreams I dreamt were flooded with fireflies and tangos
Gazing into your eyes and knowing I was at rest
But my wild thoughts, as I consciously lie
Capture these dreams

For all but about fortnite
The spell by night witches was steeped with songbirds and their melodies
Hearing your chime and seeing I was home
Yet the wildings spewing around their hissing cauldron
Strangle my illusions of love