Jacob Huff, age 16
Heritage Christian High School, Indianapolis, Indiana

Where I’m From

I’m from dazzling constellations, hot air balloons
Leaves crackle, fire snaps,
The scent spreads for miles.
I’m from a lighted square in cornfields –
A small town among bustling suburbs.

I’m from blanket forts and backyard conspiracies,
Easter eggs in the laundry,
Ducks dead in the road.
I’m from staring at the lonely tree,
The radiator’s hiss, the sun’s first ray.

I’m from Ping Pong Thanksgiving,
From Spades! Pick it up! I’m going alone!
I’m from a NERF gun war
And a strawberry-flavored armistice.
I’m from a broken heater at Christmastime,
Blankets over sweatshirts over flannel,
Fireplace draws us together.

Further back, I’m from Kentucky farms,
Gravel roads curve, bend, dive.
I’m from the highest hill in Ohi’ County,
Louie Peyton met Nadine,
A story told at the fireside.
I’m from acapella hymns I’ve never forgotten.

I pull these memories close,
Savor their warmth as I unpackage each.
A glance up, and smiling eyes meet mine;
I’m forever from my family,
Huddled by the mantel.

Michael Reed, age 18
Chattanooga Center for the Performing Arts, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Of Time and Place

I am made of time and place,
built with Legos and polyvinyl polymers.
I am from just before the stars fell.
(Vivid, intense,
it felt like hope.)

I am the Venus Fly Trap
waiting for rainbows;
the weeping willow
whose resilient supple branches
dance in the thunderstorm.

I am nachos and cheese 
and spirits reached beyond their graves

I am the get-up-and-go
and the hold-your-horses,
the quanta and the quark.

I am the seed stretched from root to sky
With a determined shove
through rich dark earth seeking illumination.

I’m Dark Matter and Big Bang,
black holes and cosmic rays
born of generations of forgotten secrets lost
to the remembered
camera my mother snapped to stop time.

In beams of light flow specks of dust
splitting rays of sunshine,
a filter of the spectrum
 streams into more or less darkened places.

I am from all these fragments—
smiled before my nativity
raindrop drizzled into the ocean