family
Writing
Where the Heart Beats
By Betsy ChaPerhaps the first
Was the open sky
Infecting above the carpeted ground.
Books astray in an old wicker basket,
Just enough room for a girl to climb in.
Crayons drawing, thoughts wild; just
imagine at your fingertips
The World.
Pictures
By Carly HassenstabPolice tape lines the yard
I walk past
Baby blue house in cookie-cutter neighborhood
I look down and it says welcome
I quickly step in and close the door
so the camera flashes don’t glimpse inside
A table set for seven with pink orchids in the middle
Christmas Axiom
By Emma MuscariThe fire hisses, flickering,
as it lay encaged by a thick black sheath of iron.
Cloth stockings droop down− bare and bereaved.
Pure, white snow is drifting
down from the blank upper atmosphere.
The gray and white dog routinely scampers
Three Choices
By Molly KavanaughThe ties to your ancestry
Binding a great family tree,
With this can you be truly free?
Now you have these choices three:
Embrace your blood,
An old-new bud.
Refuse the bonds
For fields beyond.
Keep roots down there,
And to be fair,
Battle Wounds
By Caroline KoenigSometimes things happen
It is a part of life
But no one said it would be this hard
Take her back to the start
In the beginning it was all fun and games
Just Like My Dad Said it Would
By MJ FergusonOnce I was through the door, I dashed down the stairs to my room, flinging myself onto my bed, sobbing. I felt so stupid, so clutzy, so worthless. Questions flooded my mind. Who am I? Am I really Amy? Or am I someone else? I didn’t know anymore.
Knock-knock-knock.
replaced
By Emma NicholsonDay and night become irrelevant
Time is no longer marked by the movement of the sun
But rather the hours passed in front of a screen
A Mother's Love
By AnonymousI loved you
And you loved me
Many nights we stayed awake together
Holding you close
Every time singing
Rhymes of geese and shoes
Every night
What Made Me Who I Am
By Kyle HuffakerI get part of her one day.
And a part of her the next.
I rarely see the same side twice.
But I don’t blame her,
Because she is dying inside.
Cancer is Ludicrous.
But has blessed my life.
It defines my character.
And has made me who I am.
My Brother
By Grace HoskinsHe makes me laugh
He makes me smile
We goof off
He sees a side of me that no one else sees
The silly side the ridiculous side
The “Let’s make up a word to mean this” side
We have each other’s back
Rubble
By Ayush PanditThey’ve run out of garbage bags to use as body bags.
Power lines cracked in half like splintered pencils are strewn through the streets
neighborhoods panic as the ground forgets what being solid is again
aftershocks bigger than most earthquakes bend steel and rebar
dad
By Lauren Yokshyou are like the sun:
oblivious to time’s existence
wake up at noon to eat dessert
and watch television reruns.
you are sleepless nights
and grease stained fingers
covered in cuts and bruises and scabs.
you are like the war
Bloodlines
By Ayush PanditMy blood is not pure.
Siphoned through custom it puddles as an unholy poison.
A mixture between castes that courses sin through my veins
Broken tradition seeps through my marrow
and pools black in the hardened pupils of my grandmother
A Living Anachronism
By Amanda PendleyAs the years go by and we outgrow our old faces and our old skin and our old identities,
I wonder to myself if we are really becoming new people at all,
or if we are simply just accumulating more years and more selves
Sticky Rice
By Kylie VolavongsaShe’s not sure what to make of herself
stranger at home
unfamiliar face in a sea of faces that
should be everything she’s looking for
Hot and Sour Love
By Alice WuI fell in love with the first taste of that awakening flavor. The clouds of egg drops melted on my tongue and were followed by the dark earthiness of wood ear mushrooms. I thought I was drinking liquid amber, bright with acidity and warm with the red kiss of chilies.
Call Me Stephanie
By Ayiana UhdeHi my name is Ayiana
Once upon a time,
I was a young girl
Seeing the world through rose colored glasses
my mother sobbed to herself at the kitchen table
Wondering why
Crying tears that would not relinquish
depressed feelings
Fathers are for Freedom
By Gillian KnaebelIt’s hard to understand what
to feel when his words say
he loves me but the tone of
his voice says the only thing
he cares about is himself.
Scars stain his back
and my wrists
but the only real scars are
the ones on our hearts.