a song of the sea' is a selection of three poems that articulate my search for identity. Through 'THE VASTNESS OF SELF', 'WAITING IS A PLEASURE, I AM TOLD', and 'AND AS THE TIDE COMES IN AGAIN', I explore self-worth, the fear of the future, and my slippery understanding of love. Much of my self-contemplation came during long, quiet walks on the shores of beaches near me, and naturally the writing reflects the writer - hence the theme of ocean imagery. While it was at times confusing to try to speak of something I don’t fully know, I hope that the words and cadences of ‘a song of the sea’ might resonate with you, even a little bit, in the same way it did with me.

Even in destruction, there is beauty. This is what I had in mind when I was writing Superbloom, a flash fiction writing piece revolving around post-apocalypse survivors emerging from their shelters to find a beautiful world growing amidst the destruction of their old lives.

"Move on." Those are the words that everyone is thinking when I tell them the story of you. They would never outright say it because that would be cruel, especially when they know how much you still mean to me. I don't know why I feel the things I do or why I snag them like a pesky sweater. But I feel so deeply about the people I encounter and the experiences that I have that I have to write about them. I have to write about them in the loveliest manner I can think of so that they stay imprinted in my mind until the end of time. I write about things that hurt me so that my feelings have somewhere to go. When I tell people why I hurt, they can never truly understand what I'm saying because my spoken words will never convey how I feel the way I can when I write poems. The poems I have submitted are a lesson in walking out of the quicksand that is time. I am exhausted from living in the past and holding onto my dreams of people that are gone. May this submission be a symbol of growth and prosperity for myself and all that read it.

This piece is a short story that comments on society’s tendency to treat others who have experienced trauma as social outcasts. People who go through traumatic experiences are often maladjusted and therefore often misunderstood. People tend to fear that which they do not understand, resulting in little support for those who need it the most. I wrote this story to encourage my audience to have empathy for people who are struggling, especially if they are isolated due to their pain and trauma.

I find it easier to write fiction based off elements that I see in movies or shows, or that I hear in music. But that can very easily, resonate with people. This particular piece seems to become more honest as time goes on.

I came up with the first poem as I was laying in bed and I could see the full moon out my window and it always make me happy. To me the moon represents time passing because most days feel the same but when I see the moon out my window, I know a month has passed. The second poem shows time passing as more of a natural thing we can’t control. The seasons are always going to change and life is going to move on. The third poem is a more negative poem because sometimes the days all feel the same and you want time to speed up to just get to the good parts of life. I think a lot of people can relate to this poem, feeling like your in a never ending cycle. One thing in my life I have been trying to work on is being more appreciative of the small things in life, like the moon. Just little things that made me laugh or smile. Not everyday might be great or exciting or even remotely good but there is always one thing I can appreciate.

Dealing with emotions has always been a difficult process to me. For the longest time it felt like I had no positive outlet, and having to hold back challenging emotions without one manifested in two ways. Freeze was about my experiences with not being able to move, because I was too tired yet still felt guilty, or getting lost in and overthinking. I would often stay in a chair, or lay on the ground, just trying to process my emotions. When that eventually didn’t work, I got overwhelmed and overworked my brain. This led to my second piece, Burn. I would become incredibly panicked, gaining an abundance of energy. I would pace and overthink and become so overwhelmed I would scream while listening to songs in the shower. I’ve moved past these tendencies, but lots of others haven't. I wanted to write these to show how dangerous a cycle this way of releasing emotions is. Oftentimes people repress or try to push through their emotions without properly taking the time to deal with this. This is especially common in people who we raised as men. I am a trans woman in the midst of my transition, and the way I deal with my emotions have shifted. Through Freeze and Burn, I hope to show how negative emotions should not be kept inside. Instead we should search for positive ways to release our feelings, and not force ourselves to “hold it all together.”

I wrote the work in my classroom at school because the writing is about school so being in the classroom environment set up my creative mindset for the project. A prompt that inspired me to write this piece was what sets me apart from other people, what struggle do I struggle specifically with? Being in highschool I feel like the pressure to find out and choose who you are is very heavy such as classes to guide themselves in the right direction for college but i don't know.

I wrote this peice because I wanted to open up about my struggles as the oldest daughter in my family. I hoped to capture that in a way that was similar to a letter.

I wrote this piece based on the last line. I’d liked the concept of it for a while and I wanted to expand on it, to expand on not wanting to live anymore, and maybe even staying alive just out of the fear of death. It contains elements of my other pieces, so it’s kind of a combination of everything I’ve ever written. This piece is relevant to me even now because trauma stays with us for life, we can try to work through it as long as we want, but in some ways it will always be with us.

This piece was definitely different from what I usually do because it talks about a grand scheme, not something super close and personal. I guess that's why I wanted to submit this piece, but with it being more about the world around me and not me around the world, it still feels close to me and I like that.

I enjoy writing pieces that include metaphorical descriptions of complex emotions– alongside straightforward hardships, usually centered around family and general interpersonal relationships. This piece specifically conquers the feeling of people around you not giving you things that should be a given– like love, care, comfort, and general understanding. It’s compared to the feeling of dying because the narrator sees the continued lack of these things, despite pleading for them, as a form of murder.

This piece is a dramatized depiction of my own inner monologue. It’s meant to display the struggles with intrusive thoughts and an inner monologue that seems to just hate you sometimes. But it’s meant to end on a hopeful note. I guess I wrote this piece to see if there’s anyone who can relate to how I feel sometimes about my inner monologue.

Our script "The Letter" is an innocent love story built from friendship. It is relatable to anyone who has missed someone who moved away, or lost someone. This is a piece that will make you feel for the characters, and is a fun and romantic read. Romance is the top selling book genre and most profitable fiction book topic, so for those interested will enjoy the read.

My piece is about a summer love at the beach. The poem describes the boys features and how they relate back to where they spent time together. Its a short, sweet teenage romance, on the sunlit beach.

My submission is a poetry collection entitled Divinity, which is based on the idea of the present in the religion of Christianity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In this collection, the story is shown through the perspective of the Son. Starting with the Father, the Son recounts the abuse he faces at the hands of his Father for being gay. In his poem, the Son describes the internal conflict he faces between his sexuality and the religion enforced upon him. In the Holy Spirit, the Son grapples with the idea of salvation and tries to repent for his sins. I chose to write this collection because this is a deeply personal struggle many people face, regardless of religion. There is a schism between those who are open about their sexuality in society and those who are more devout in their religious beliefs. Through this divide, there is a conflict for those caught in the middle. While I do not have an answer for this issue, we could all be more understanding of each other's identities and embrace the multifacetedness.

This is a piece showing the expectations of womanhood and the struggles that come with that. It concludes with the statement that comparison is ugly.

These poems all center around the different emotions one can feel when in love. I infuse the intricacy and the gut-wrenching feelings of this emotion in an array of in-depth and complicated sensations. When I write, I have to get ideas on the page as fast as possible before I sit there trying to remember all the thoughts I just had, I cross my fingers that it sounds as good on paper as it sounds in my head.

My sister and I have grown up the same, followed the same path, and could even, at times, read each other’s minds, yet we have become vastly different people. We had the same eyes, the same nose, the same freckles, but as I grew older and she followed suit, our differences were exposed and we grew apart. The relationship between sisters is nuanced and ever changing, but with me and my sister we could always depend on each other when we really needed it. This piece is based on a mundane, but significant interaction between me and my sister when she messed up when dying her hair. Through the sisters Amy and Maddie’s conversations it is revealed that Maddie is insecure about how people perceive her. Amy and Maddie, much like me and my sister, don’t often talk about not superficial things, so this is a profound realization for Amy. Amy knows now that Maddie is insecure and unhappy, and she wants to support her. Amy does not know how to help Maddie, so she does the one thing she can, which is fixing Maddie’s hair carefully. This piece shows the strong bond between sisters, even when they have grown apart, and I wrote this piece because I wanted to capture the moment when I realized this in my own relationship with my sister.

FULL CIRCLE uses the unspecified "you" and "i" pronouns heavily to illustrate the dialogue between my present, past, and future selves -- especially within the context of recovering from an extended depressive period. Within the collection, I explore the fear of "losing myself", the struggle of changing, and the hope of success. Having overcome that era of my life, I'm able to look back with compassion and sympathy. My greatest and most impossible dream of getting better has become a reality -- bringing me full circle.