Weekly Challenges
Deadline
Through poetry, prose, or personal essay, write about the experience of being a teen. What challenges do you face day-to-day, and expect to face in the future? What do you wish to communicate with the world at large, if only it’d listen? [Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash]
Blood
Hands
I look around
How did I
Get here
No
How did we
Get here
To this place of
Rioting
Festering
Loathing
Hatred
When I was young
Can you remember
Who you were
Before the world told you
Who you should be?
__________________________
i was too much
for you
someday
I’ll be enough
For someone
You’re perfect just the way you are,
but here’s a serum for that scar.
Love yourself, embrace your face,
but first, some contour
you know, just in case.
This is for everyone
Who has criticized
The body
Of a child
Today
An eleven-year-old girl
Is sitting in a hospital bed
Because she can’t eat a meal
Without feeling guilty
“Why didn’t you ask for help?”
When I didn’t write for weeks
I was asking for help
When I stopped smiling
When I stopped laughing
When happiness became fake