The walls utter gossip at night.
They watch new women pass,
different steps, new perfumes,
claiming corners they'll never own.

But they remember the first.
Her laughter soaked into the brick,
her voice lingering between each creak and crack.

The new names echo differently,
but the first is the only one
These walls still recognize.

I dread going to school every single day.

I hate it,

I hate being trapped there.

But I love being greeted by my best friend

who could make hell

feel as freezing as

these February Maryland mornings.

I love my best friend so much.

And I love the car rides to school

with my mom.

Her presence alone makes me

forget we're driving to misery,

her voice echoing during

our car conversations.

I love my mom so much.

I hate waking up early on the weekends,

my frivolous late night decisions

drowning my mind in regret,

forcing my eyes down into

the blackness of my pillow.

But I love the sound of my cats'

meows instead of an alarm clock,

the pressure of soft,

furry paws across my bed

and my chest to say "good morning".

Nuzzles across my hands

and my face.

I love my cats so much.

I hate that I live so far from my family.

Tired from long drives,

long weekends up to New York.

But the second I open

the door to whatever cousin's house

we're at this time,

it seems to feel like

I've lived in New York

all along.

The welcoming warm embraces

of my cousins,

the squeal she makes when

her arms wrap around me,

worth a million times

more than the four-hour drives.

I love my family so much.

There are so many people,

so many things,

whose love makes

the worst times

bearable.

So happy Valentine's Day to

my best friend,

my mom,

my cats,

my family,

my cousins.

The silver linings

of times that

would be so much worse

without them.

I love the smile on people's faces when I hand them a poem with their name on it & yes of course you get to keep it.

I love the texts I get in the group chat when I send pictures of outfits I might wear; all the heart emojis like little rising clouds.

I love doing my hair in the morning and happy-screaming to the mirror when it turns out alright.

I love throwing my head back when I laugh, gasping for air like I'll never get enough.

I love mechanical pencils, the soft chk of lead when my words are too much for the page.

I love pulling my knees up to my chest and playing with my shoelaces, wondering how in the world they got so dirty & laughing at myself cause it's definitely my fault.

I love laying on my back on the floor and letting whatever music's playing surround my body like lapping waves.

I love addressing my poems to you, your hair, your smile, your confident walk down the hall. I love switching it up and no one ever knowing who.

I love when we hit a crescendo < and our voices flow < with unrestrained ease.

I love showering and taking too long singing camp songs to the empty room.

I love writing reminders to myself on the backs of my hands in blue ink and knowing I'll accidentally wash them off anyways.

I love sitting at lunch with my friends, all of us talking at once like water released from a dam, tumbling headfirst over the falls.

I love the opening chords of any Noah Kahan song.

I love poetry in smooth black pen.

I love chanting my Torah portion when I hit a spot I can do without thinking & it all flows smooth & my tutor claps her hands & shouts over the Zoom call with contagious joy.

I love Newsies and Hamilton and any musical with background claps.

I love when you and I can wink & know exactly what to do, no explanation required.

I love the hot tingly feeling you get after a day of sledding, from your toes up like a static shock, and the giddy red-cheeked excitement of it all.

I love finding folded papers in the back pockets of my jeans; forgotten letters from last week's me.

I love spending hours perfecting the last lines of a poem and submitting it with a glow in my chest.

I love the organized chaos that is a performance on stage.

I love when the sun comes out in winter and everyone's faces are wide and bright like February sticks finally bursting with buds.

I love when you nestle into me on the bus in the cold mornings and I make unhelpful suggestions as to the state of your Tetris game. We inevitably lose and I love it.

I love nougat chocolate bars & odd sweets from other countries; I love being able to try anything I want.

I love walking back to our cabins at camp and the unintentional camaraderie that comes from swinging our waterbottles (adorned with friendship bracelets, half-finished) in unison as we crunch down the gravel path.

I love jumping from the docks into the lake when it's ninety degrees and the sun sticks to your back and you long only for the relief of the darkened waves.

I love composing poems in my head as we fly down the October highway, red-gold trees rolling by like swathes of autumnal fire.

I love that first clear morning after days of rain.

I love the warm embrace of community on the holidays when we go in for services & all the food is laid out potluck style and everyone is just happy to be around for the celebration.

I love thick black typewriter font, slightly smudged.

I love stick season and mud season and that week in February where everything feels cold and pointless. I mean I don't love it while it's happening but in the far reaches of summer I long to long for the warmth again.

I love reading poetry collections and dog-earing all the poems I like and someday going back to read only those.

I love big gold hoops & mascara & when my hair falls in shining waves.

I love eating perfect steak and pretending to faint from how good it is.

I love being my bestie's personal dictionary & the one everyone turns to when they don't know what something means. I love knowing and teaching and getting to be there when someone finally learns.

I love sleepovers & times when the friendship feels just right, like a sudden click & then all the brightness in the world.

I love looking at old photos with a lemon-sweet nostalgia burning in my heart.

I love crossing off days on my calendar, the feeling of getting closer to something even if I don't know exactly what.

I love going into the dojo in the mornings and having the same conversation as always - does anyone actually have a plan? - and coming up with it together as the sun begins to shine.

I love writing to-do lists and grocery lists and lists of things I love.

I love opening YWP in the afternoons when I come home from school and reading all the new posts, like a book I get to open anew every day.

I love Vermont summers and Vermont autumns and Vermont springs and every day living in this green mountain state, feeling like it's truly mine.

I love rambly poems that are probably way too long.

I love listening to people talk in other languages, fluent like I'll never be & beautiful like honey dripping thick off a spoon.

I love blue sunsets and pink sunrises when the clouds go all wispy white.

I love I love I love I love I love too many things to ever fit into words. I love my friends & my family & my world & my life

and the loving fills me up and breaks my heart. I love more every single day

and I didn't think I could find any more to love. I love finding more.

I love showing my love. I love too many things to ever fit into words

but every time I breathe or play a song or flash a grin

to someone I don't know I feel another little <3

enter the list of things I love.

Do you remember those September evenings we spent together in the playground?  
The shiny rock we put in our pockets and the ugly little rocks that got lodged in our heels.
The plastic slide that went into the sandbox that made your hair go like exclamation marks.
The little clovers with heart-shaped leaves that tasted like soap smell.
The day we waited two hours for the man to come turn on the sprinkler.

Do you remember, many years later, when you and I went to camp in the mountains?
The August evening to nights we spent with everyone else sitting in the hammocks.
The Friday nights when I would wear a hat and we would sing and pray and dance.
The times we left to go on hikes, and you would braid my hair because I was scared of lice.
The day we came back and told each other stories about how far you had to hike and how heavy my backpack was
The night befor we had to go home, far away from each other, and we stayed up all night and you hugged me and cried and cried and I didn’t and I should have and I’m sorry.

I saw the waves 
crash over the sand 
where you once sat. 

Your ashes sink 
into the waters 
you once sailed. 

Others desecrate 
the land 
you once found holy. 

Soon your house will be sold
to strangers
who will never know
the man who prospered there.

And maybe the hardest truth is,
I have lost him too,
for I no longer know
the man who once lived.

In the forest of all things new,

Our mother says there is no food

The rabbits are gone,

The squirrels are too,

All that's left are the big brown bears,

All comfortable in their dens

They have taken all the food

Not to eat it, but to sell it.

In the forest of all things new, 

Mother says she'll get us food.

We wonder how she will

If not from here, then where?

She comes back with a mouse,

A small one for us three.

We have to share the mouse.

For the bears have decided

This is how it has to be.

we plan sledding days at the country club with a hill

& reminisce about them when summer comes,

recall hours spent tumbling

head over heels into mounds of snow, clutching

for dear life the thin plastic sleds, shrieking with terrified laughter

as the hill flies away beneath us &

in february when it happens we grin with relief

and nearly forget 

that rush of wintry glee 

when the warmth we wait for                   finally arrives.

The person who inspires me the most right now is an amazing woman named Amit Elore. She is a 2024 Olympic gold medalist in women's wrestling, along with many more national and international gold medals in wrestling. The reason she inspires me is not just that she is an amazing wrestler who has done amazing things, but that she embraces being a woman in a male dominated sport. In the past I have felt like I had to suppress the feminine part of me when participating in my sport, but after following Amit’s life as she trains through being pregnant with her first child, I have come to realize that she is completely embracing being a woman, she isn’t trying to become more manly to achieve her goals, she becomes who she is: a strong woman who can do anything she puts her mind to, including training for the 2028 Olympics while pregnant.

Weren’t we supposed to be

Different?

Didn’t we fight wars

Didn’t we sign papers,

Promising we were something?

Something

New?

But papers are just ink

And quills

And people with privilege to hold them.

But wars are just boys

A few men

Willing to fight for what they believe

For a few years.

That promise

Is lifetimes.

It’s calloused hands building

The frame

And cities of children learning

To build the walls

And the bravery to climb

To put the roof on,

It’s the resilience to do this a thousand times

And the kindness to do it for a hundred neighbors.

I thought that’s what we signed and fought

For,

We have to prove it meant more

Than men from centuries ago

And quills from museums.