Honorable Mentions
The Little Things In Life
Lila Adeyemo is a fifteen-year-old artist who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She works with a wide range of mediums including charcoal, graphite, and oil pastel. She is currently enrolled in New Mexico School for the Arts under the visual arts program. She focuses on nothing in particular as she is still finding her style.
Chandelier
Vaughn Sekulich is a 17-year-old artist who attends Oak Park and River Forest High School in Illinois. She loves using a variety of materials to create colorful and bold art. She also enjoys guiding collaborative art projects with children. She's an introvert, enthusiast, and a bit of a perfectionist. Some day, she hope to work as an art therapist. You can find her Instagram at @Bonee_sie.
Life in Bucharest
Eepshita Chowdhury, 18, lives in Bucharest, Romania. She has a passion for photography and painting. Main sources of inspiration are usually lived experiences, emotions, and music.
Animal Advice
I ask the birds how they survive
without holding onto anything.
They tilt their heads like I’ve asked
the wrong question.
The cat says loss is just
another room in the house—
you learn where not to sleep.
The dog doesn’t answer.
He just brings me a stick,
like grief is something
you work through with your hands.
I ask the deer what happens
when the forest changes.
She says you don’t argue with seasons,
you grow new paths.
No one tells me how to keep
what leaves.
They teach me how to move.
And somehow, listening to animals,
I learn the wildest thing of all—
that surviving isn’t clinging,
it’s trusting the ground
to appear again.
Ariam Kinfe is an 18-year-old from Columbus, Ohio, who has recently graduated from Columbus School for Girls. She will be attending Transylvania University in the fall. She is an Eritrean-American poet who likes to write about identity, mental health, and moments of quiet self-reflection. Poetry is her way of understanding herself and the world around her, especially since poetry can give language to feelings that are difficult She loves to sing, travel, hang out with friends, and get involved in her community.
Haiku: The Winter
The streets are silent
We, too, are America
But I don’t hear us
The cold ice sweeps in,
Marching boots pound like thunder,
White smoke rolls over
A small step forward
Bang, bang, blood splatters the ground
When will it be spring?
Eyes peek from behind,
Blinders, windows, doors, and shields
But when will they speak?
People march in the street
Crushing ice under their feet
We will bring the spring
Daphne Nickel is a sophomore at Amundsen High School in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently a part of her school's Model UN Team, and does tennis and figure skating.
Great Erosion
A stone thrown into the soul crushes the spine of life and invertebrates.
The stone doesn't work under the influence of intention and events.
Geographers say that exogenic factors drive major erosion and the heated hunt for reasons is left
to the victim.
Naturalness was created to cover up indifference, thoughtlessness, and fear
and since then,
the order of the universe has had a ceaseless call in thought or word, to strengthen the landslide
soil of anxiety like artificial terraces.
The climax of the explosions, instead of being thrown into the fire,
is the silence of premonitions and the loneliness of the ashen.
The great echo of a powerful event drowns the river of the future,
trembles a crown of flowers trapped in the potential of the earth,
like a grumpy old man, it closes the door on the washerman who should take your soul and
spread it at the equator under the scorching sun of a calm god’s truth,
and you too will dry up from childhood to wrinkles: from a sun-worn shirt to drought,
with the first drop on the face, waiting for the rain,
when you soften the stone with a blade
to expel the invertebrates,
the snails driven out of their shells and the naturalness that does not belong to you.
Mariam Bukia is a 17-year-old student from Georgia (the country). Her professional journey spans multiple roles, including editor, blog writer, general manager, project manager, PR manager, deputy director, young teacher, head of the personnel department, book club leader, and speaker in educational organizations. As a writer of poems and stories, she nourishes the garden of her thoughts and ideas, letting creativity bloom like sunlight on fertile soil.
