Whenever there is something in my life that I want to talk about, I write a poem. This collection is called "Origins" because I describe my essential self. "To be a brown girl" talks about realizing how I've been "othered" in my adopted country. "an ode to the weeds growing in the sidewalk" is about memories of a sunny day in the dunes near my middle school, where I was one of 19 students in my class. I remember it as a simpler time, stepping into adolescence before I started high school at a significantly larger school.

When I write poems, I often find myself exploring topics that touch my heart. Through conversations with people around me, I've been fortunate to connect with a community of like-minded South Asian queer artists. They're making an impact on representation through their writing, music, and contributions to various media forms, and it has truly inspired me to create this piece. In my entry, "Brown Love: Currents of the Heart," my creative goal is to depict queer love. It's a love that beautifully intertwines with affection and demonstrates its ability to peacefully coexist with the complexities of our identities. My inspiration stems from the groundbreaking efforts of Black and Brown queer activists who have dedicated years to forging an identity that truly belongs to us. Their tireless work for equality, inclusivity, and justice has not only challenged norms but also paved the way for a new generation of creatives, like myself, to wholeheartedly embrace and celebrate our diverse identities. Their legacy acts as a guiding beacon, motivating me to craft the narrative of Brown Love with genuineness and heartfelt sincerity. My goal is to convey a message of unity and acceptance that goes beyond individual boundaries. By celebrating the beauty found in diversity, I also aim to shed light on the transformative power inherent in love itself. Through this exploration, I hope to contribute to the dialogue surrounding the intricate nature of love, identity, and our shared human journey.

My grandmother's cancer battle inspired this tribute poem, celebrating her magical touch that revived lifeless plants. Her passing deeply impacted me, sparking resilience and community involvement, like joining Boy Team Charity. This poem is cathartic, changing my view on death, infusing strength to face adversity. Like my grandmother, it embodies resilience and hope, embracing life and my growth. It fosters belief in overcoming obstacles, cherishing daily moments, nurturing hope in endless possibilities each day offers.

"The Ode to the Knee" is a praise piece to the knee, the part of our body that stabilizes and keeps together our entire leg. As an athlete, my knee is subject to lots of stress and pressure, so I wanted a means of thanking my knee, so I wrote an ode to it. With the use of end rhyme and imagery, the reader is entitled to the humor in this ode which is made to try and get some stress of the knee and let it laugh. Thank you, knee.

The story of an impoverished youth in a difficult world doing what he has to.

I wrote this poem in response to the heavy impacts of climate change that becoming increasingly apparent through severe natural disasters and other negative effects on the environment.

Try as I might, there really is no way to describe my artistic process. That's just the nature of my poetry. It is inconvenient, erratic, and falls onto my pages chunks at a time. It shows itself at precisely the moments I don't have a pencil, forcing me to grip it amongst other thoughts, until I can find a page to store it on. It's never there when I need it for a school assignment, or a love letter, but rears it's head when I'm sobbing, or trying to sleep at night. I've tried to keep aside notebooks specifically for my poems, to dedicate time just for poetry, but recently I've learned just to keep a notebook on me and hope for the best. These three poems, for example, are poems that were not easy to put on paper, since they all stemmed from trauma. "What I Never Told You," focuses on the guilt that can follow childhood innocence. It was such a specific feeling that the words didn't all come to me right away, and inevitably, parts of the poem ended up on gum wrappers and napkins. "Goldfish Memories," and "The Graduation Party," both about the loss of childhood innocence, were even harder to pen down, and the first draft consisted mainly of scratched out words. But despite the bumps, the sporadic ebb and flow of words in my head, I ended up with three poems I am proud of. Maybe that's just my poetry. It never comes easy.

Holding The Stars With Quiet Hands' is a collection of three poems that highlight my experiences with mental health struggles and the importance of finding creative outlets that helped me heal. 'Fluorescents' illuminates the often harsh reality of facilities meant to aid in mental health crises. 'Handful' details the essentiality of writing poetry and creating art in a way that helped me heal from destructive habits, using human hands as symbols for both destruction and creativity. ‘Shipwrecks’ outlines the importance of being here in times where it feels impossible, using the boundless abyss of the sea as a metaphor for how endless our emotions can often feel. My writing comes from raw emotion and experiences, thoughts threaded through stanzas in the hopes of better understanding myself. Through these poems, I seek not only to shed light on the realities of mental illness, but to spark hope for anyone else who’s ever struggled with similar issues.

This piece is inspired by an antique vase that sits in my grandmother's home. The vase originated in Okinawa and has once sat in my great-grandmother's home. It now sits in my grandmother's home. During visits to my grandmother's home, I often wonder what this vase has seen and witnessed.

This piece is from an ongoing portfolio I’m working on called love/body, to replicate the word somebody, its meaning, and the link between love and the human body, consisting of a collection of studies on love through fiction. Being a writer, I read, and through reading and simple observations of life, I’ve seen a lot of different takes on what love is and how its existence can either build something great or wreck havoc. I wanted to explore all perspectives and takes on it through this portfolio, and through the lens of the body, since I also love biology and all things the human condition. So that’s what this is about! Lots of metaphors and similes about the body, about love—but really, the main theme would have to be the consequences of love as devotion. For my process, I adore prewriting. I list what I want to accomplish, what I want to convey, and even some songs that I think fit the vibe. I write, I linger on it, I leave it alone, I come back to it. I’ve been writing this piece in particular for a few months now, and I think this is its best form.

Valentine Hillary and Tiago Moreira wrote the screenplay, Pumpkin Spice, as a fun collaborative script about a 22 year old man named Zach who orders a pumpkin spice latte for his girlfriend but accidentally drinks the whole thing on the way home before he can even give it to her. After drinking the latte, Zachary starts displaying stereotypically flamboyant behavior and tries to hide his shifting sexuality from his girlfriend. Eventually, he falls in love with the barista who supplied him with the latte. This script is a fun read because it's so ridiculous and takes a playful jab at fragile masculinity and gay stereotypes. It was made by gay people, for gay people.

When writing The Waiting Room, I thought of humanitarian crises throughout history—and now—and especially how hospitals have been targeted. I wanted to emphasize the importance of continuing the conversation around it. This poem comes from the perspective of a clock. The more time that passes during which we do not act, the more time passes during which innocent lives are taken. Call for ceasefire now.

My first poem, “field notes on daughterhood,” explores the complexities of a speaker’s relationship with their body and societal expectations tied to daughterhood. The speaker grapples with conflicting perceptions of worthiness and salvation, feeling trapped within a corroded self-image, and desiring to be seen beyond the fractures of longing and shame. The poem concludes as the speaker contronts an internal paradox: they seek validation and love but struggle with the discomfort of being perceived as someone to be pitied. My second poem meditates on the concept of “fallen women,” drawing from literary and cultural references throughout history. The juxtaposition of quotes about fallen women from Victorian literature and an Iroquois creation myth highlights contrasting portrayals of women's falls. Repetition of phrases like "so lucky" emphasize a sense of irony and sarcasm, challenging the traditional notions of luck associated with this fall from societal grace. Disjointed language mirrors the fragmented identity and ostracization often faced by women labeled as fallen. The poem captures the complexity of societal perceptions of women who deviate from accepted norms and invokes a sense of resilience and defiance in the face of societal judgment. It celebrates the strength and grace of these falling women, reframing their descent as transformation rather than condemnation. Both poems ultimately delve into the complexities of societal expectations and the struggle against predetermined roles, challenging conventional narratives surrounding gender and agency. They aim to redefine perceptions of femininity, spotlight complex female experiences, and emphasize women's agency in challenging societal norms.

This summer like every summer I was in Colorado to visit my grandparents. One day I decided to explore the forested area cradled between the rocky mountains. and absolutely wondered at the beauty of it all. I wanted to capture the variety of hues in the landscape and the feeling of the Colorado sky which truly cannot compare to anywhere else in the world. I also wanted to capture scale of it all and the feeling that you are on top of the world but just a tiny speck compared to the trees, mountains and the endless cerulean sky.

It is about my grandfather who is from Soviet Ukraine. My mom's side of the family is Ukrainian and they have a lot of trauma from the soviet years. Recently I was goofing off and I managed to make my grandpa laugh, it was so special to me that I used it as a prompt for my poem. For context, sunflowers are the Ukrainian flower, and the Russian word I included (not Ukrainian because of the soviet union) means "friend". My grandpa and I used to call each other that and it's always been a very special word to me, even though it's just a basic way to call someone your friend. My grandparents found the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 especially hard to deal with, and that is what I was alluding to in the line talking about the news. I hope you enjoy my writing, thank you for your time!

Loosely based on the stories which my dad has told me about his journey throughout life. As a first generation child of a Haitian immigrant family, I often feel like a lot is riding on my back. This piece is an expression of my feelings about the pressure of success.

My poem addresses the unspoken message spread by our culture that in order to be truly successful and worthy, you must commit yourself to nonstop work. This is something I've seen around me and experienced first hand for some time now, especially in highschool. This poem was initially written as a blackout poem using the original words of a deep sea dive article, and I’ve made a few touch up details but the poem itself is the same. But over the years, I’ve seen my peers loose themselfs in their work and missing life beliving they don't work hard enough or that they could have done better, and its sickening to see thems torture themself’s when they commit so much time and effort, and don't get the satisfaction. That's when I asked the question, "When does that end?". If nothing you ever do is enough, then what goal will you ever reach? It truly is scary, and I can feel from them that the pressure feels like an ocean, but in their mind this was the only way. This topic is incredibly relevant in my life right now. This piece reflects both my thoughts on the subject in an attempt to view it from an outside perspective, and to give my feelings around it. The title “The Waning Sea” is a play on the word, originally meant to imply that the sea is waning, but it’s introduced over the story, the sea is waning us, who we are as people.

Honestly It was just a memory I thought of that was the time I could say I was the most happy I'd ever been since everything been so different since my cousin passed away, so I just thought of the time where we all came together including him and it was all laughs and he just knew how to make everything better so I was pretty much just thinking about him while writing it.

I took the time to look around me and push the “norms” that society gives kids my age. I think people of all ages should read it and take it with an open mind.

To spend your childhood looking up to the women in your life, only hoping you'll blink and be grown like them, only to find the truth about femininity in this world is a very harsh reality to come to terms with. Growing up is something I've come to fear, less of the wrinkles or the bills but more of the bitterness this world has within it and losing the shield of your youth is a frighting process one must overcome. Writing out these fears combat that bitterness and turn it into something controllable, in my reach. I look at the woman in my life and not only see beautiful brave people, but also people who have overcome those obstacles and found their way in something that to me currently, seems like a mountain unclimbable. However, working through these thoughts helps me to make sense of them and come to terms with the fact that it is okay to feel out of control, you will find your path.