Wistfulness by Erica Jwa (California)

stereotypically, time really does slip by like miniscule granules of sand through my fingers; regardless of how vigorously I clutch my hand into a fist or how firmly I press my knuckles 

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together, the gaps that riddle my flesh sustain ephemeral streams of beige like an hourglass signaling limitation, ridiculing human mortality. and i can feel the lines around my parents’ smiles deepen and the creases of their eyes stretch and i can feel my sisters shoot up like sprightly bamboo stalks and start to know more than i can teach them and i can feel my friends drifting until all i cling onto are the traces of their touches around my torso, the vestiges of vague visions i can only recall fondly. and it’s solely empty whispers and a simulacrum of contentedness i maintain with a fixed smile that sustain my wishes to return to the past, to the golden sensations of quiet, unknowing bliss, the perfect delusion of being unaverage, my grandmother’s warm, enveloping embrace. 

Erica Jwa is a high school senior from California who has been fascinated with poetry since the age of 7. She revels in the versatility of language and the way each writer melds together combinations of varying diction and literary devices to create their own unique voice. Her poetry and prose are like a diary encoded in figurative language, a window into a mind often riddled with endless streams of thought. She writes to understand her own emotions and bring them a physical presence, aiming to help others feel less alone in their experiences and verbalize what many may be harboring internally. ​