beauty dies here: it slips from your fingers like silt as the sun slips beneath the distant horizon that you can run to but never truly touch. it wilts like the youthful flush in your cheeks as those rose colored days flicker in favor of an untimely and devastatingly human death. everything dies here, except for the distant rumbling of gears and tanks and guns and tears that stop sounding so distant when you listen closely. when i sit here on the rubble, i can hear the sl

In Equality by Penn N. Teller Too many men Have drawn conclusions Taking mental note Of society’s exclusions Those excluded refrain From getting involved For the conversation Will surely devolve When will they Stop facing rejection In the midst Of society’s projections? Too many assume In bad faith Haunting the excluded Like wretched wraiths But their stance Stands no ground Except for sheep Societies build around Holding onto faith It will take To vanquish hate And never bre

The Wait, of the World, on our Shoulders The waiting game Cannot be willed by skill Nor by strategy, a tragedy For those who wait until The day their praises are sung The day the prize is won Is such a day as certain As the Moon after the Sun? Food for thought, yes Churning the cerebral cauldron Of a melting pot of men Who must shoulder this burden Some men stagnate And let Time burn But his clocks will tick And his hands will turn And they will learn They were mistaken When

There is a silence that does not live in quiet— but in the spaces between words we almost said. It lingers in the throat, like a confession that grew roots instead of wings. We are archives of almosts— almost love, almost truth, almost becoming something unrecognizable to our past selves. And isn’t it strange— how memory edits itself like a careful liar? It smooths the sharp edges, dims the unbearable light, turns earthquakes into whispers we call “lessons.” But beneath it— o

Women: The kitchen is their home And their homes are their stretch Women: Their families are their lives Their furniture is their friend. Women: Dough is their glove, Their children are their purpose. But wait— Hold your breath for a minute and tie your tongue to your teeth And think. Just think. Open your eyes, broaden your mind and see; How it's Cleopatra who taught us how to lead, And how it's Zenobia who taught us how to save, How it's Kosem who showed us how she mothered

Before the first word there was a silence so complete it remembered everything. Not the silence of empty rooms, but the silence inside a seed waiting beneath winter soil, holding forests no one has seen yet. We are born from that silence. We arrive crying— not because the world is cruel, but because the soul has suddenly become too large for the small body of a moment. And so we spend our lives trying to remember. We build cities of language, towers of certainty, maps of tomo

Carpe diem, Seize the day, Before your time has passed Carpe diem, Life is short, Come, no more living lark, Raise your flag and raise it high Before it is your time to die. Carpe diem, Time long past, Memories are lost for last, Stop this hurt, End it now, Come, don't go break that vow, Carpe diem, Time is short. Written by Angela Rooney, an 8th grader interested in poetry, reading, and writing.