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Grade
11

Fading words are my daily dose of morning prayer.

A catch before the half-light,

soft and molten.

woven spool caught

between

the flicker of memories.

 

A soft word equals

a brief savior from the extinction

of this moment.

 

So, maybe, this is the place where oblivion can fade,

within the navel of the moon,

where death leaves under the gentle breaths

of Bugambilias

and the strums of words

that no longer exist.

 

Now, quick! Before it evaporates tell me of

the yellow brick on yellow mortar,

and how my grandmother used to

sing in an ancient dialect I no

longer remember,

and how now,

silence fills the walls,

and how much I hate it.

 

All I want is for

yesterday,

to stumble

through the back door,

her with it.

Grade
11

She struggles and hands it to him.

 

He doesn’t even glance over, instead choosing to stare at the screen, fingers flying across his keyboard like dancers in a show. A show that repeats daily, without a break in routine.

 

He doesn’t even notice the scent.

 

Years have passed and his senses have dulled.

 

He no longer cares for the sweetness.

 

With a sigh, she takes it back and continues to struggle on her own.

 

When she finally succeeds, she breaks it into two halves and passes one part to her husband.

 

Every day has been the same.

 

The colors in their life have faded, from a once picture-perfect vibrancy with the saturation turned up to the dulled down sepia, bordering on black and white.

 

As the brightness dims, the distance grows.

 

She leaves the room.

 

It’s sweet with a hint of tanginess, its colors intense and pure.

 

She eats her half of the orange alone, in silence.

 

It’s chromatic.

 

Grade
9

                I’ll never forget. That day feels as though it were yesterday, yet in reality eleven years have passed. But still…I remember, I remember it all. The way mom beat Johnny against the doorpost, his two year old heart-wrenching screams. The police sirens. The flashing lights. Mom’s grimace as she turned and scowled at us while the police led her hand-cuffed to the patrol car. That was the last time I saw her.

                In a blur of events, I found myself in foster care.  In court, my mother, who was a drunkard and a drug addict, claimed she no longer wanted me and my brother. My heart trembled when I found out that she had willingly signed over her parental rights. Big tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. I was confused. I was hurt. I didn’t understand.  I remember thinking, “Maybe she is a bad mom, but she’s still my mom. How could she desert me like this?” I remember crying myself to sleep for weeks and weeks. In my first foster home, I was hard to manage. Having just lost my mom and having never known my dad, my seven year old heart bled with abandonment, resentment, and bitterness. In school, I continually fell further and further behind and took to bullying other kids. At home, I was cold, nasty, and destructive. Originally, my foster family tried to be understanding, but I guess I was just too much. After a few months, my foster family decided they couldn’t deal with all my “junk” anymore and asked for me to be removed from their home. Sadly, they had fallen in love with my lovable, smiley, big-blue-eyed brother and began the steps towards adopting him. I masked my feelings behind a tough act, pretending not to care, but the truth was I did care. Deep inside, I was hurting terribly. I remember the last time I saw Johnny.  The day was dreary. Rain poured down from the sky, trying to outdo the flood of wounds and pain in my heart. As I stumbled toward the car with the caseworker, determined not to look back, Johnny dashed out of the house, down the white steps, and across the black-top driveway to me. He dug his arms into my legs and clung to me with all of his might. “Don’t leave me!” He pleadingly cried. Looking back, I wish I would have whispered, “Okay. I’ll stay with you.” But I didn’t. Instead I detached his little arms and stared down into his sad, round eyes. The sorrow in his rain drenched face nearly melted some of the ice that had begun to form on my heart but at that moment I heard the screen door screech open. I knew Mrs. Lorry was watching us. In that instant, all the resentment and antipathy came rushing back. Obdurately, I squared my shoulders and angrily pointed at the woman standing on the porch. “You either come with me or you stay here with her.”I nearly spit the last word out.  Johnny followed my finger with his eyes. He then grabbed my hand and tried to pull me towards the house. “No!” I screamed. “They don’t want me here. Don’t you understand? They’re not my parents and they’re not yours either!” The screen door closed with a bang. Startled, Johnny dropped my hand. He glanced towards the house and then back at me. His forehead crinkled into lines and his eyes dropped to the ground. “Fine,” I said defiantly. “Abandon me, just like mom and dad.” I darted to the caseworker’s car and clumsily climbed in. As we turned out of the long driveway, I caught a glimpse of Johnny in the car’s side mirror. He stood there soaked and helpless. I now wish I would have jumped out of the car and returned to him, but I didn’t.

                By the time I turned eleven I had bounced in and out of three foster homes and was living in my fourth. Because I had crossed state lines and since Johnny’s adoption had been a closed adoption, I had completely lost all contact with my little brother. School continued to be a struggle. I remember the loneliness of the first day of middle school. Sitting alone at lunch, I purposely stared through anyone who approached me. I didn’t try to make friends. “What’s the point?” I remember thinking. “I probably won’t be here next year.” Don’t get me wrong, I feverishly longed for friends but I was scared to open my heart, or be vulnerable, and then get hurt again, so instead I locked up and built a protective wall around myself.

                Over the course of the next two years I bounced through more foster homes and when I reached thirteen, my caseworker shook her head and mournfully said, “We’ve run out of options.” She dropped me off at a group home for hard to place foster children. It was a dreary, dismal place which held a gloomy, forlorn air. I remember the disheartening welcome I received from one of the kids who lived there. With a cruel nod he mocked, “Happy dooms-day. Once you land in this place you’ll never have a real family. This is the system’s last resort. It’s where all the “problem kids” go.” Outwardly, I coldly shook off his words as if they didn’t bother me, but deep down they fiercely gripped me. Stifling my tears that night, I buried my head in the strange, new pillow. “Oh!” I cried inwardly. “Why? Why? Why?” The hopelessness of my situation closed in and the tears I believed had dried up long ago continued to flow. At that moment, I had just one wish. I wished someone would hug me…yet I knew the boy was right. This was the last resort for “hard to place kids”. I knew I would never really be loved. Upon reflection, l think I could almost feel the pounding of hammers in my heart as my wall of protection continued to isolate me. My miserable feelings swirled round and round inside of me and out of sheer emotional exhaustion I fell asleep.

                By fifteen, any last, clinging hopes of ever being blessed with real friends or a real family had entirely vanished. My wall of emotional protection had grown to such an extent that I fatally doubted anyone would ever be able to break through. Continually, I became more and more torpid, irresponsible, detached, and despondent. I was my caretaker’s least favorite and I almost delighted in being so. I viewed my life as an utter wreak so I seriously didn’t care what I did. I now see giving up was stupid and cowardly. I should have pressed on, or something, but I didn’t.

                Like most other older foster kids, my eighteenth birthday was a huge event. Because my caretaker was so relived to finally have me out from under the roof, or so I thought, a party was thrown in my honor. To spite everyone, I didn’t show up. Fearing an awkward goodbye the next morning, I snuck out into the darkness the night of my birthday. I remember my final look back at that bleak house. Memories came rushing back in heavy torrents. Missed birthdays, disappointments, failures in high school, my non-existent diploma…the weightiness of it all nearly made me stumble. But what I remember the most is the knowing that I could never return to that house or any I had ever known.

                It’s now been six months since my eighteenth birthday. I live on the dangerous downtown streets, which are infested with rats, germs, criminals, and gangs. Everything is dark and dirty. The whirling, churning recollections that have haunted me these past few months have confused me and yet I’ve emerged with a fervent passion to turn my life around. But it’s all over now. I’m sick. I’m dying. I know it. I just wish that sometime during those hard, harsh years I would’ve let someone through my wall or that someone would have helped me tear it down, but now it’s too late.

 

Grade
6

You consume my mind

And feed me caterpillars

To grow into butterflies

When I speak to you

Grade
6

         It all started one day in my 5th-grade class. My teacher gave us a writing assignment as she always does every week. When she assigned an assignment, she always gave us an organizer to help us develop ideas on what to write. To be honest, I never enjoyed those writing assignments.

 

        One day in January of last year, however, something was different from all the other writing papers that I had done so far. Strangely enough, I was kind of looking forward to the writing project since the topic of the essay was refreshing and interesting to me. For the essay, my teacher told us to write about what we wanted to be when we get older. I was so excited because I already knew the answer to that question. Still now, my future goal is the same: I want to serve the State of Kansas as a senator.

 

         As always, the writing assignment came with an organizer that had many questions. One of those asked who my role model was, but I did not know how to answer that question. Surprisingly, my teacher noticed that I was struggling with that question. She suggested that I contact the office of state senator Tom Hawk and learn about what it was like to be a senator. I sent him an email with a few questions about what a senator does in office, how many years you could be in office, and how the Senate was formed. A week later, his office replied to my mom and asked if I wanted to page for Senator Tom Hawk. Of course, my answer was YES! I was so excited to go because I have never been to the capitol building before. I knew this was going to be the best experience in my life.

 

        A week later I arrived at the capitol building in Topeka and worked as Mr. Hawk’s page. It was a great learning experience. I had opportunities to go around the building and do errands for the other senators as well as observe what senators do for the State of Kansas. I really enjoyed going inside the courtroom and listening to what I would hopefully be doing in the next 20-25 years from now. From that day forward, I felt motivated to work as hard as I can until I achieve my dream.

 

        In about 25-30 years from now, I see myself at the capitol building in Topeka, Kansas. Many people dream about being someone great or doing something big at some point in their lives, but only a handful of them achieve their dream. I can just imagine how hard it will be to become an elected senator and how many failures I would experience before getting there. Luckily, I have learned a lot about disappointment through basketball.

 

        For the past three months (December – February), my basketball team (the Monarchs) practiced every Saturday and we had games every Sunday. Every game and every practice we improved our technique and communication, and so I thought we could win a majority of our games. It turns out that we were not good enough and we ended the season without winning a single game. Despite these losses, my coach and my team worked very hard and shocked our parents (as well as ourselves) at the final game by scoring 14 points. We still didn’t win that last game, but it was improvement! “Do not be afraid of greatness some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon em’” from William Shakespeare. Many great people like Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went through things unimaginable, but they did not let those things bring them down and quit. I have already signed up for a basketball clinic to be prepared for the next season.

 

        I am imagining a beautiful future for Kansas, a place that is much more innovative and interesting than now. My family has traveled to many parts of the state for my older siblings’ extra-curricular activities. I am always thinking about how big Kansas is and how poor many small towns look like. Recently I did a research project with my classmates about a “future city” and learned how small and large cities across the globe are inventing their future through innovative technologies and ideas. Likewise, I would like to experiment with new technologies and ideas for Kansas’ future. We added many things to our “future city” like a hyper loop, air traffic, and mega towers. I think in the future of Kansas there will be these things and much more.

 

        I would like Kansas to be a fun place for families and tourists. For vacation, my family often goes to Colorado and I think I know why: there are not many interesting places to visit in Kansas. I am dreaming of many new attractions. My dad loves hiking and I would like to see beautiful hiking trails all over Kansas and many interesting things to do along the trails. One of the ideas that I had in mind was a petting zoo. All animals that don’t have a home would come here and live happily ever after. To get in the petting zoo, you wouldn’t have to pay to enter but we would accept donations. If one of our visitors would like one of our precious animals, it would be very simple.

 

         One day I would like to invite a 5th-grade girl from Amanda Arnold Elementary School to be my page and to give her an opportunity to learn what senators do at the capitol building in Topeka. I want to make the future something that everyone can look forward to. I don’t want the future to be the same as now, but I want it to be better than ever. We all can live in a better community but that will never happen if can’t make the right decisions at the right time. I want to make everyone proud of where they live now. We want to change Kansas and our community for the better to create a happier future for everyone.

 

Grade
7

# This is a perl program. It can be run at the command line, or in an IDE.

# If you aren’t using a Mac or Linux computer, or just don’t want to bother

# with the command line, you can copy-paste this into tio.run/#/perl5. Then,

# click the play button. Look in output.

# I'm not sure whether stuff like this is even allowed, but I'll

# do it anyway.

use warnings;

my $e = qr/s/; my $i = qr/i/; my $k = qr/n/; my $b = qr/b/; my $f = qr/c/; my $j = qr/o/; my $a = qr/o/; my $h = qr/t/; my $c = qr/f/; my $g = qr/a/; my $d = qr/u/; my $food = 0; my $water = ""; my $death = 0; while($food < 11){ $death = rand(25) + 97; if($death =~ ${chr($food + 97)}){ print chr($death); $food++; } } print "\n";

Grade
7

Rich

 

If you were rich

With money and gold

What would you do with it

To bring you joy untold?

 

A mansion perhaps

On the top of a hill

With 42 bedrooms

And a huge outdoor grill

 

Or maybe a car

That can move with great speed

Complete with leather seats

You’ll insist that you need

 

Or maybe you’re different

And want something small

Maybe a ring or some jewelry

Diamonds and all

 

But whatever you do

With your money and gold

Always remember

That joy can’t be sold

Grade
7

Nervous systems got me nervous with
Systems and cycles
of negativity
All strings attached
It’s misery
Flickering in my room
Stuck in the corner
Quite literally
All thoughts distorted
I’m not crazy
I’m just lonely
I don’t wanna hurt you
I need to hide
Please
Don’t watch me
Cry

*Beat all of a sudden stops*
*All that is heard is heavy breathing*
The monster
It’s creeping over
To take me
I hear it whisper
To me
The lights flicker
Get the picture
In your head
Does he want me dead
Or want me to rest
Forever
The lights flicker
It gets thicker
The air
And my breath
Hard to breathe
And chest beating
To a beat I can’t handle
The lights flicker
*...*
*Beat slowly starts back up*

I have fear of myself
Because I bully myself
Brainwash myself
Selfless, I am
But selfish too
When I’m sad as hell
I’m stuck
Because
I can’t go away
But I don’t wanna stay
One day
When things are better
I’ll be able to be a rapper
But not someone’s actor
I’ll only write things I want to write about
It won’t be fake
I’ll be different and be unique in the rap game
I’ll come out one day
When I control my fear
Not only fear of myself
But fear of being afraid

Don’t give a damn
About the slurs people tell me
Bad self-esteem is deadly
People learn that the hard way
Always
Afraid
Of how it could be me
In that spot
I don’t think about it though

Ok,
Maybe I do think about it.
Probably too much.
And it makes me scared
And being scared is scary
But at least I’m aware of when it’s there

The light flickers
When air is thicker
It’s hard for me to breathe
I’m stuck in place
Between life and death
But how hard can that be?

Grade
8

She came from behind, snatching my body. Holding my waist so tight I could barely breathe.

I was still in shock when the gag was slipped on, brushing through my teeth.

Her words, soft like a snake hissing made me shiver.

Her warm breath on the back of my neck, felt like a sudden blast of heat in the cold winter night.

When she turned me, her cold, evil smile was enough to make me want to run. But I couldn’t.

I was trapped.

Trapped in her arms, now tying my hands together.

Trapped in her foot, pushing me down on my knees.

Trapped in her van, riding through the night soundlessly.

Trapped.

 

Grade
7

In a small cube, no longer than twenty-five meters each side, there is a civilization. It doesn’t care what goes on outside their cube: they’ve never thought about what’s outside. They believe this is all there is, only their cube, nothing more, nothing less. And why shan’t they? This has all they need, and all they think they will need; there’s no need to make more technology. They know where everything is, what with the size of their world. In the high corner of the box, there sits an object. The people don’t care what it is. To them, it just is. It hasn’t caused them harm yet, and they believe that it can’t, and never will. The thing moves in a strange, seemingly random pattern. It makes noises, but they have no immediate pattern. As with all civilizations, this people has a language, but it isn’t like any other language. They have no words for “up,” “down,” “left,” “right,” “forward,” or “backward.” They know the positions of things by the walls; they say not “to the right wall,” but “to wall(r).” Although they have no word for wall, because with all their neighbors in such a close distance, and so little territory, they have never thought to protect their stuff with walls. The walls have their own, individual, unique name. They have no word for “civilization:” There’s none other than themselves, and why bother creating a word for multiple of something, if there is only one? They can’t think of other groups, because the thought has never crossed their mind, and can’t ever cross their minds, because there’s nothing that would ever prompt them to. They have no word for “light.” Light is omnipresent in their world, from sources invisible to them, yet bright enough and spread enough to light up their world. There’s no need to say light; they don’t think about how it affects the world. This civilization is doomed to this fate indefinitely; they cannot think outside the box. They are trapped not by the walls, but by themselves, their own minds, their own thoughts (or lack thereof.) They weren’t put here for a reason; in fact, they weren’t even put here. This is a unique civilization, evolving in this cube. There is nothing to them but this cube; this is it. This isn’t anything special: it’s just life. All reason, all importance, anything that is real is only in here. There is nothing else. They don’t need anything more. There are three ways they can free themselves: They run out of space for something, such as bodies or food or corpses. One of the slight mutations that inevitably occurs during reproduction creates a child who is able to think outside the box; he spreads his word, and the civilization escapes. An accident occurs, knocking the wall ever so slightly apart. They can ask the thing in the corner to help. But none of these options would work. Each one has their own problems. Problem number one: They can’t run out of space. The math doesn’t work like that. Their reproduction rate prevents any form of severe overpopulation. They have their population ups and downs, but it all settles out in the end. And if there’s never overpopulation, then there can never be too much food. For the last one, the corpses of the dead decompose quick enough that there’s never going to be too many corpses in the ground, especially with the first two. Problem number two: Mutations are nonexistent. Everyone is too related to each other. This means that they can’t mutate into a philosopher who frees them. Problem number three: The walls are too thick. It would take an explosion to break down the walls, and they’re too stupid to develop gunpowder, let alone blow something up. They don’t experiment; they think everything's been discovered. There’s no use in experimenting, because nothing interesting will happen, so you may as well not do it. Problem number four: Narrators cannot interfere with the flow of a story. When that happens, it completely screws the story over. A narrator interfering with the story will make the characters question who they are, and the concept of free will. This easily transforms any good piece of fiction into a philosophy book, and no one likes reading a philosophy book. Furthermore, as has been stated before, they are too stupid to get that idea. The only way that they could get that idea is if he dropped the piece of paper that he just finished. Which he did. This story is really poorly constructed. Albeit there really don’t seem to be enough accidents in stories. So it could be proposed that this is following a great storyline, except that now the narrator is just complimenting himself. He’s also referring to himself in the third person. He’s even acknowledging it. Oh well. At least the creatures in the box can’t read english. So it seems that this is the end of the story. Except you know this isn’t over. Not in the slightest. No no no. If we look back at the creatures, that paper the narrator (who is still referring to himself in the third person) dropped jump-started a chain of philosophy that ultimately led to the escape of the civilization. One of the first conversations of this era went something like this: “Did this sheet?” “Thing.” “But move only it.” “It do more?” This conversation led to the spread of this news. So they thought “Maybe is more not than think.” So they came up with words such as “light,” “civilization,” “crops,” etcetera. (Translated in their language, of course.) But they didn’t just come up with new nouns, oh no. Heck, their language got a lot more complex. They had verbs, adjectives, adverb...really all parts of speech (although interestingly, there are no articles whatsoever.) Because they hadn’t thought to have each sound of each word represented, the writing system that they came up with for this language was a logography. Well, maybe that’s not the correct word. Instead, each symbol changes based on somethings that vary in the word, such as personage in verbs, or adjective of a noun. Similarly, similar things have similar symbols. It would be pointless to transcribe the sounds of the language into the Latin alphabet, because, having evolved separately from us, they hadn’t developed a “mouth” in the traditional sense. Therefore, their sounds that they had come up with would be, if not impossible, at least requiring at least two people or a surgery. The paper drop also caused the people of the box to think outside the box—literally. A completely different person saw the paper drop and thought “Not occur zero! More not?” So they chose to experiment. What happens when you mix these three powders? Ooo, big red thing! What if I mix it different? Bigger red thing! What if I really mi OW OW OW. If you hadn’t realized yet, this person had discovered gunpowder. Others saw what they did, and decide to try it for themselves. Before too long, everyone was exploding. To sum it up nicely, they busted out of the cube. And there wasn’t anything. They were on a desolate world. There was nothing around them. All that was around them was sand. There were no trees, no vegetation. There was nobody who could help them. They were stranded on this desolate land. There was a reason that cube had been created. It was to preserve the life of this world they were on. But, slowly, all in that box died. And eventually, new life forms evolved in the cube. They shouldn’t have left their cube. It was their only hope, their oasis. The world around them had died, and frankly, it was dangerous just to be outside, because of the way the world had died. They were alone in this world. Or were they?