SCRIBES' WRITING CONTEST: SILHOUETTE BY ALICE S.
by Alice S.

Congratulations to our middle school authors who have impressed the Scribes’ judging panel, the high school AT Publication course judges, several middle school ELA teachers, and teacher librarians. Criteria included best fit to the genre, meaning, craft and structure, careful revision work, and reader response. Here's a poem by eighth grade student and poetry category winner Alice S.:

Silhouette
In the glass door of the balcony;
Standing in the darkness
Illuminated by the light behind me.
It looks like an adult.

I step back under the light.
Again, I am a child.

The imagination of children
Their naivety, purity, juvenility…
Their actions unencumbered
Their thoughts free.

So willingly they stand in face of the future
Yet with each burden they face
With each year added to their age
The “child” peels away from them
Slowly and unwillingly at first 
Then fast, 
Propelled by the paradoxical
And omnipresent
Child.

Maybe growing up
Is just about extinguishing
This imagination.
To know not every princess
Has her knight in shining armor;
To accept that fairies and angels and mermaids,
Will eventually fade into remnants of our past;
And to face - and grow to know well-
The true monsters under our beds.

Again I step into the darkness.
This unfamiliar adult-like silhouette
Stares back.

Maybe it’s because the jump
Has disappeared from my steps;
Maybe it’s because I’m battered
By the burdens life hurls.

Or maybe
I’m still a child
Letting my imagination
Run wild.

  • aspiring authors
  • authors
  • creativity
  • middle school
  • poetry
  • scribes' contest

 

 

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