Poem

Madison Pellicier

Wallkill Valley Regional High School | Grade 10 | Poem

The ocean shines brightly
A crystal-like blue
It is quite sightly
It makes me think of you

Days spent at the beach
Nights on the boardwalk
But now you are out of reach
No more long talks

Our time together wasn’t long
I wish it could have been longer
You fought so strong
But the storm fought stronger

Although you lost the war
I’m proud of all you are
I know you’re never far
I see you in the stars

So when the ocean shines brightly
It’s a crystal-like blue
I cry and smile slightly
Just know I love you

Birds Welcome

Liv Worthington

High Point Regional High School | Grade 11 | Poem

Mr. Robin, I saw you at the hospital 
and again at the lake. 
You brought beloved brushes and dyes
to keep me busy for an afternoon,
and I painted you a birdhouse. 
Take those colors to your new box-beige room. 
I know it’s beige. 
I also know that Robins 
don’t deserve anything less than the August sun. 

I’m about to cry now-
let’s put our heads on the oldies' shoulders,
they’ll carry you back to when you saw it all,
but saw too little to fill your cup that keeps getting smaller.
Back to before your birdhouse sat in a garage 
or even further- to a nest in Liberty Garden
where the world and silver dollars were in wings’ reach. 

Mr. Robin, you have a hold on me so stop letting go. 
You’ve lit so many other candles that your own is flickering,
tethered by prescriptions that hold on to you-
who you were. 
Fly back to then, crawl if you must,
be aware and in love with life. 
I have the same appetite as you: 
I know nothing is ever enough 
and the worst is slipping 
names blurring days repeating 
other people's memories. 

“A candle loses nothing when it lights another,”
but I can’t find a match.

In Between Two Heart Beats

By Emily Shefferman

Lenape Valley Regional High School | Grade 12 | Poem

Living for each moment
All that I can get
In between two heart beats
Hope and some regret
The sky is at its darkest
Everyone’s asleep
In between two heart beats
Silences we keep 

Is it just coincidence?
Or is fate painting me a sign?
All these crazy incidents
Hang like rainbows in my mind
This pot of gold
I’ve been sold
Is still buried in the dirt
No matter how I go, you know
Someone’s getting hurt
Either way I’m waiting here
Like I always do
In between two heart beats
Always you 

When you’re watered everyday
Thing tend to stay in bloom
In between two heart beats
Someone else’s room 

Is it just coincidence?
Or is fate sending me a clue
All these crazy incidents
I keep ending up with you
This dream of us
So obvious
But what’s it gonna take?
No matter how I go, you know
Something’s gonna break
Either way I’m waiting here
Like I always do
In between two heart beats
Always you

an orange for you

Liv Worthington

High Point Regional High School | Grade 11 | Poem

as a lover of stars, i am compelled
to make my life poetic. 
constellations smile down;
i catch them on paper.
too often, when i try to say
that smile, that emotion 
with its own tone,
i speak it without meaning
or feel it without words. 

at nine, that feeling 
was gooey and shiny 
like mom’s ring  
and meant only crossing parking lots, 
paper valentine pots, 
hiding candy and not getting caught.

memory keeps those reminders-
plus notes 
of coffee, conditioner, 
fried county fairs.
i added snapshots of safety,
because falling 
under lets me be soft
instead of only strong.

Love 
means looking forward.
it means 
sharing, living.  

these are my words, my yellow
my sunrise my purple my promises 
my rings my rooks my firewood
my first hot chocolate of november
my splashing citrus weather
slowly warm evenings of june
the days we watch the moon-

We are crescents of this cavernous sky,
beaming at these bits of universe
we call each other

You Need to be Kind

By Charlotte Gough

Wallkill Valley Regional High School | Grade 10 | Poem

Mummed

By Maddy McCurdy

High Point Regional High School | Grade 11 | Poem

Jordan Wolfanger

Lenape Valley Regional HS | Grade 12 | Prose

Ten fingers, five attached to each palm. At the end of each of these fingers, extended long, decorative nails. My mother took pride in painting her nails every two weeks, changing up the color and adding designs embellished with gemstones of varying sizes. Her hands were always decorated, her left hand adorned a ring, a band of shiny gold with a diamond welded into the center, representing the love my mother and father share for one another. Her hands were soft, and had a soothing quality to the touch, from all the times she cradled me and my siblings as infants. However, the memory of her previous years as a bank teller haunted her right hand, her arthritis reminded her of the countless times she had to count the money in her teller drawer by hand at the end of her shift.

Looking down at my own hands, they share a similar composition. I too have five fingers that branch off the base of my palms, with painted nails at the end of each. However, my nails are not as flashy, usually only displaying a single color of paint. Sometimes if I was feeling saucy I chose a color with sparkles mixed in, but for the most part I kept my nails plain.I didn’t want to draw the same attention to my hands, for they did not share the same elegance of my mother’s. My left hand was bare, but my right had a ridge forming on my middle finger from holding my pencil while sketching. My palms were peeling, fallen victim to winter’s harsh conditions. No lotion could soften the perimeter of dead, pale skin that climbed up each finger. I was cold to the touch, and my hands had a purple hue to them, as if they were decaying off my wrists. When pressure was applied to them, a white ghost appeared on the pressure point, and then faded back into purple flesh. All typical symptoms of a condition called Raynaud’s Phenomenon, which I happen to have.

My hands first started turning blue sophomore year of high school. As my sister and I walked to her car after the last bell had rung, my bare hands were met with the frigid Februaryair. After taking refuge in my sister’s car, I had looked down at my hands, as I intended to use them to plug in my phone to play music. My hands were frozen in place, and were a greyish blue hue. I was horrified, and my sister took a picture, as if I was some tourist attraction.

Come see the freak with blue hands.

I had always been a cold person. It could be 75 degrees outside but I would still be seen wearing warm layers. I would always get random chills tingling down my spine, and my hands were always cold. After speaking to a Doctor, she diagnosed me with Raynaud’s. It was not a serious condition, it was caused by poor circulation to my hands and feet, and essentially was the reason my hands turned almost every color in the rainbow.

While it is not serious, I am reminded of this condition everyday. I dreaded getting out of my warm cocoon of blankets in the morning, as I have the coldest room in the entire house, ironically. Layers were my best friend, and so were space heaters. My mother always found me on my floor sitting pressed against my heater, grasping onto the warm air it pumped out the metal grate. For Christmas a year ago, I was given heated gloves, and they were revolutionary.

The thing that bothers me the most is when I touched someone else, they flinched almost immediately, probably in shock by the icy fingers grazing against their warm and normal skin. They would draw their bodies backward, creating space between me and them. This reaction is usually followed by “Wow your hands are freezing!”. Once knowing this, they didn’t want me to touch them. They did not want to share their warmth, and they did not want my coldness.

Touch is a connection, and it is a comfort. I wished I had a comforting touch like my mother, like her hands. I began to detest my own hands, I viewed them as broken and ugly. Dry rashes laced my hands and the left patterns of little red bumps all over them. The texture of my skin became crackled like a desert landscape during its driest season. One night I coated them in vaseline and slept with socks on them, to alieve the irritation of the rash and dryness.

I felt this way towards my hands until one day I was sketching, and began to reflect about all the things that my hands did for me. They completed simple tasks such as they brushed my teeth, tied my shoelaces and allowed me to open doors. They helped me take my ideas from my mind and translate them onto paper through my artwork. They are even typing these very words. Perhaps I was being too hard on them, and should be more grateful. The coldness of my hands did not have to represent what I was on the inside, and I shouldn’t be ashamed of my cold embrace. My mother would always tell me:

“Cold hands, warm heart.”

And I learned to believe her.

We Wake Before the World

Alexa Petrie | Lenape Valley Regional HS | Grade 12 | Prose

We wake before the world, my mother and I. Before the birds, when the stars still shine in the sky. Before the sun, when the path in front of our feet is clear and dark. We unzip the warm havens of our sleeping bags and roll out onto the cold floor of the tent, careful not to disturb my dad and brothers, still sleeping. We step into the cool crisp air and into a strange world; not quite dark enough to need a flashlight, but not light enough to walk without wanting one.

We walk through the campground, its tents isolated by a trail that must be hiked. Tent, food, water - everything you may need, carried on your back like a snail. We walk fast to get to the overlook in time and to keep the cold air from seeping into us. But after we reach the trail that leads into the woods, we slow.

The trail is just wide enough for us to walk side-by-side, one hand in the other’s and the other in a pocket. Our sneakered feet slide over dew-wet grass and crunch on forest leaves. We breathe the smell that comes with knowing you are the first ones awake and feeling like the only people in the world. We are surrounded by life, the familiar leaves of the trees enveloping us like a carefully crocheted blanket. The woods are quiet, so different from the woods near my house. The trail is long and winding to a destination that we have never seen, a place that feels unknown to humankind.

Finally, the trail widens into an oasis of grass, lined on one edge by a cliff overlooking a valley; far away, a majestic dark mountain looms from a sea of trees. There is an abandoned picnic table close to the edge, placed almost parallel to the cliff. This is where we sit, backs to the place we came from, faces to the mountain.

And we wait. We wait for Planet Earth to spin us so we too can see the sun. It feels too slow; have we walked all this way for nothing? The sky is gradually lightening, but we can’t see it unless we look away and blink and remember how dark it used to be. We wait, the edge of the table pressing into our backs.

And then we see it. The promise of a new day glittering on the horizon. The birds can see it, too. They are awake now, chirping, the first to welcome the new day. The clouds turn a soft pink and the glow reaches the trees. It spreads like syrup on an empty pancake plate, slowly coating each leaf, gradually reaching more and more trees. We watch the sun, our star, float upward, forgetting that we are moving toward it and not the other way around.

Why do we watch the sun rise? Why do we wake up early to see something that happens every day, the subject of countless photographs and amateur paintings? Of the millions and millions of photons that have traveled the 93,205,678 miles to meet us, why do we want to see these ones? Maybe it’s because the sun’s rise reminds us that the world still turns even if we cannot feel it.

Throughout my life, the sun has risen 5,473 times, but this one feels different and special, because I’ve shared it. I understand, in that moment, the vast expanse of my mother’s love, but there is just enough space within for us. We are two very small people in a very big world, hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour, spinning endlessly in circles. Everything we know and love, everything we have ever known and ever loved, is contained on this great big rock. We put our arms around each other and watch the sun rise.

“Good morning, world”.