at orange Dawning, when the World is all of a Hush
the Angels come & the Angels sit by my Bed trying so
hard to be Quiet. but even in my most secret Dreams i
hear their footsteps & they sound like the Stars
Singing & i am Comforted. one Day they will bury
me in the Garden & i am Comforted. they will drown
me in the bath & when they softly push me
down with their big big Wings i will
be as peaceful as the pie-slice of Nothing between a tiger’s
whisker & the Moon.
the Angels tell me that i will rot but not to
be Afraid because — !
because i am the Universe’s very own baby
& the Spring is always coming:
under the Ground the Grass
has already begun to stir. & in the Dark
time when the Day & i are sleeping the Angels come
& whisper to us so we don’t get
too Lonely. in our untongued Silence they touch our hair
& tell that Dying is like a warm pool —
the Girl you met in a hotel when you were Seven
holding onto your hand & leading you on bare
feet down a long long Hallway with a
Light at the End & you are carried Upstairs but in the next
Room the grown-ups are still laughing & you can hear the clink of
glasses. it’s like this, say the Angels: when you do fall
you fall Gently.
Grade: 10
Washington, DC
Washington, DC
Oh, I definitely have too many to go into here, but a few of my favorite authors right now are Neon Yang, Tamsyn Muir, J.R.R. Tolkien, Susanna Clarke, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alexandre Dumas, Ursula K. Le Guin, Vladimir Nabokov, and Maya Angelou.
I hope to see our world become a gentler place.
I can never pick favorites! But a few of my tippy-tops are Magnus Hirschfeld, Aurora Aksnes, Maya Angelou, Oscar Wilde, Theo van Gogh, James Baldwin, and Derek Jarman.