|
a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
|
|
a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
|
![]() How to grapple with this spewing Dialectical thought. Out of the airport We drove past concrete lilypads Man’s calloused hands pressed against stone Shoulders stung with saltwater. Thousands of eyes in the mangroves Unmoving and silently crying For the houses that have forced themselves In swamp and brack water Pushed suburbia into a cluttered paradise Mammalian skeleton of what once was The beer cans that have tangled themselves On the fins of a manatee White egret choked by the tides of tourists and screeching toddlers. My mother’s mother speaks swedish The language’s lull fills the sulfur smelling room with stories of general stores And Minnesotan winter Her cracked voice pours fresh water into our ears It will freeze over. My cousin delivered three babies today Souls welcomed by florida hospital heat Scrubs and tired smiles Teeth that have bitten into once beautiful land. My other cousin’s head clashes with the wheel in front of him The chameleons cry in his pickup truck Tails wrapped around black rubber A rainbow frenzy of reptilia moving at seventy miles per hour. And I sit on rock adjacent to the intercostal Guiding paddle boards with sharp breath I root my hands in the dry grass that digests my body Eaten by plant shards born by a storm In front of me a windswept wicker chair crawling with fiddler crabs. I have run on the oily wings of roseate spoonbills Now I glide my bitten hands through the ocean of stars below me Trace the constellations with a tan body, humidity’s child. My arms propped up by swarms of mosquitoes Small bodies bursting with sugary blood Floridians taste the worst. Amelia Frank is a senior at the Spence School who has won three regional scholastic awards, been published in the Ellipsis, We Write Here and Georgetown's Creative Writing Magazine. She is 17 years old and from New York City. In addition to writing she enjoys debate, chess, and singing.
Comments are closed.
|
Categories
All
* = Editors' Choice work
Unless otherwise noted, all pictures used are open-source images in the public domain. Archives
October 2023
|