Search form

Writing Challenges: Inspiration and ideas to spark your creativity every day

Previous Post
Next Post

Teenager

Who are you and what is your life like as a teenager in 2023? In words or images, explore, but don't feel limited by, questions such as:
  • Who are you at your core? How, when, or where do you most feel like your true self?
  • What most inspires you? Where do you find awe, joy, contentment, kindness, love?
  • What are the major influences in your life – people, places, ideas, creativity, the arts? How do they help to define who you are, what is important to you, and what you hope for in your life?
  • What issues are teenagers facing that adults don’t understand?
PRIZES AND PUBLICATION IN TWO CATEGORIES: Writing: Poetry, prose, essay, commentary, songwriting; Visual Art Category: Photography, painting, sketching, sculpture, collage, digital art. If your chosen genre or medium isn't listed here, that's OK, go ahead and submit it!
NOTE TO VISUAL ARTISTS: Responses can be abstract, literal, symbolic, interpretive, realistic – whatever best conveys your message.
DEADLINE: March 1, 2023

Respond

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Responses to this Challenge

Feb 15
poetry challenge: Teenager

human

As new January arises, one more layer of complications spreads throughout the lavender atmosphere.
As new January arises, one more layer of this-way-to-be (no, it's that-way-to-be) sprinkles down
like rain. An eternal shower across the world, and the meteoroligists have a party
as a thousand new ways to fold the hems and buy eco-friendly brands and speak in scandalous sarcasm
rain down, down, down. You can't be, you know. Trendy. That makes you a try-hard
You can't be not trendy. Then you're just some self-pitying, attention-seeking, "ooh it's a rebel."
You've got to not not be trendy, the double negative, the unsung formula---
but formulas are too complicated and  brainy for them hourglasses, so "let's just make some silly
little joke about formulas and how we all suck at math" and then forget we ever said anything
Read More
Posted: 02.15.23
Feb 14
poetry challenge: Teenager

youth is a butterfly

i remember dancing with you in old playgrounds

    your love is like water
soft rain    dapples my face until it shatters; it
forms puddles in concrete—
that children can’t help but    jump in

i remember drawing families in sandboxes
    and i know we were in
    social exile—
too scared to play sports,
    but we were in
oblivion

and now my glasses
are less foggy
but i wish they weren’t
because then,
    i wouldn't care how i looked,
    i wouldn't care about words i couldn’t hear,
all i would care about was the next
time i got to talk with you.

i saw the creases in the corners of your eyes when you smiled

but your face is an     afterimage
and my memory has been washed away with
         tears.

we were puzzle pieces
        that once
fit together
        perfectly.
Read More
Posted: 02.14.23
Feb 14
poetry challenge: Teenager

Being a Teenager Means

Being a teenager means… 
  • Letting go of old friendships even when you don't want to
  • Getting up every time we fall down, which is more often than we can count
  • Getting a bad grade on a test and vowing to study harder next time
  • Meeting new people you wouldn't have thought to be friends with
  • Getting through the hard times with a book and a shot of espresso
  • Doing stupid things and getting caught
  • Crying a lot but always feeling better after
  • Singing along to breakup songs when we are home alone
  • Living the way we want and not caring what others think
  • Journaling and writing poetry as therapy
  • Letting someone see that we are hurting and letting them help us
  • Late-night talking and watching Stranger Things
  • Worrying about the future and wishing time would slow
  • Wishing time would move faster so we can finally grow up
  • Turning in assignments at 11:59 PM
  • Living happily and being
Read More
Posted: 02.14.23
Feb 13
poetry challenge: Teenager

Love, As It May Be

I crave to press spring 
memories in the pages 
of softest moleskin.

Journals with petals 
spurring out from the buds of 
newly birthed flowers. 

Delicate as young 
love always is: bound to be 
broken by mistake.

Endless as Mother 
Earth intends. But when does Break
call for Mend? Can the

thin stem of a pink
Hydrangea be replanted
and grown once again?
Read More
Posted: 02.13.23
Feb 12
poetry challenge: Teenager

A Month of Tears

These are a series of poems, about me. I wrote these over a span of a month when I was working through a very hard stage in my depression.

EMPATHY

Make fun of it, have no empathy
I want to say the right things though, they are always the wrong
I take so long to say them, they have no relovence anymore
Will you recognize it? 
Wil you remeber me?

Usually you're the one who does this
Leaves me with no answer, just to piss me off

But maybe you've changed
Maybe you've aged a little bit
But probably not
You still think I'm crazy

If we switched for a day, like a freaky friday
Maybe you'd want to leave too
I'd be totally fine being you
I wish you had empathy, I wish you would

SILENCE

Silence, the worst treatment
You'd rather sit with a stranger than with me
When I was all you had, all you needed

You can't just ignore it 
Read More
Posted: 02.12.23
Feb 11
poetry challenge: Teenager

I Had Never Felt Less Black

A melatonin frenzy, 
where hurried bodies 
scatter back and forth. 

----------------------------------

I walked down the hallway to the dance floor,
streamers hanging from their perch atop the ceiling, 
searching for my curly haired friend 
among the dizzying mass of people. 

A wave of sound hit me like a brick, 
the chatter of impatient teenagers 
rocking back and forth on their Jordans 
overlaid the loud bass echoing in my throat. 

As the crowd grew louder, 
my throat constricted,
choking on the harsh words 
of people I didn’t understand. 

Every few seconds,
someone would start a mosh pit, cheering and clapping, 
“Ay ay ay” 
hyping up the dancer in the middle. 

I just tried not to get trampled on, 
bodies ebbing in and away, 
shoving, pushing past me 
and into another circle. 
Read More
Posted: 02.11.23
Feb 11
poetry challenge: Teenager

ancestral tragedy

On August 15, 1947, the Partition of India separated the nations of India and Pakistan. From this followed riots and massacres that have marred Indian/Pakistani history, a generational experience that has shaped my cultural identity today. Here are sister tales of tragedy.

i.
the land and sky
like my old saris
bitten apart by moths;
we have been torn by our
struggle,
overwritten by colonialism,
save me—
love is a luxury.

i used to think that
bollywood folk would be
ever-present.
but like my skin,
language is 
bleeding.

my eyes are dappled with water,
i must be strong,
but my daughter has been lost
in the darkness
i watched as fire was the only light
in purple-gray skies,
riots where family
crumbled,

nightfall— and i can’t see anything,
the jasmine flowers have wilted
so all is gray ash,
Read More
Posted: 02.11.23
Feb 10
poetry challenge: Teenager
WillcanRead's picture

Who am I?

Who am I

Am I the one that perseveres

The one who solves everyone's problems 

The one who lends a hand,

The one who had to push for completion, satisfaction, and the pleasantry of happiness

Who am I if not the hero, the savior, the helper 

“What do you mean that I have limits!!?”

I can do anything, everything, whenever, and however I want

Because I have figured out who I am 

I am the one who perseveres

 
Read More
Posted: 02.10.23
Feb 10
poetry challenge: Teenager
aliza.j's picture

At the Very Least

I’m sorry for your heart that cares for mine,
I’m sorry that I can’t sit still in this love.
I’m sorry because internally I’m shaking, I’m worrying, I’m scared.
I have this fear that you’ll leave my life in
one way or the other, the same way I fear 
that I'm already losing the rest of our friends.

How I wish that everyone I care for could
stay in my life forever, that we would never grow apart
and stay stuck together like this,
but our youth is on a ticking time clock, and we’re
almost out of time.

I don’t know what to say to you, yet you
still understand.              I don’t understand 
how warm you feel, how comforting
a single person’s presence can be.

The truth is, I look at my friends in the middle
of our daily lives and my heart explodes with fondness.
I catch the brightness in their eyes when they laugh
so preciously, and all I want is to give them the world,
Read More
Posted: 02.10.23
Feb 09
poetry challenge: Teenager

i curse the gods of the land and sky for letting you suffer

i don’t want to read the news anymore, since when did it get so personal?
an earthquake came and went and left thousands dead,
i’ve spent so much time criticizing god, now here’s me praying—
and i can’t finish that sentence because we all know the statistics;
you’re just a number away, life and death are just separated by a tally mark
a building that crumbled; i can’t look at these pictures anymore.

you’re more than just a statistic to me.
i hope god doesn’t take you away from us;
they say that entire complexes went down in dust
like they were nothing more than cards—
this is getting hard, because i can see your smile, hear your voice
when the death tolls come, the tone of the radio woman doesn’t change
she’s indifferent. but i’m clenching and unclenching this glass,
i can see why they drink.

if a toddler was rescued, you can be rescued too, right? but please, i need you to
Read More
Posted: 02.09.23

Pages