I wrote this piece my junior year of high school. It's based off an experience I had when I was very stressed out about my school work and my social life.

I wrote these poems to help understand the balance of light and dark. In a lot of media, light is representative of good, and darkness representative of bad or evil. I wanted to explore the good that lurks in the shadows, and the light that isn't always positive.

The idea for this poem came to me last minute while I was thinking back on an old apartment that my family and I used to live in. Every time I stepped into the bathroom, I was frustrated and scared and immediately concerned for my health as well as my families for the reason that my lungs were weak at that time and my grandmother was on a respirator. Therefore, this piece of artwork depicts my personal experiences and feelings towards the circumstances I was in. The words in this poem are very important to me and close to home in ways that I can not describe verbally, so I have released my feelings through writing.

I wrote this piece while thinking of the abandoned tunnels and architecture that exist under cities.

This poem is me reaching out to my mother, I have trouble with communicating what I need when I need it. In the past I would just shut down and hide my needs from everyone around me. During the time I was making this poem I was in one of these shutdowns, I felt that I needed a way to express myself. I decided to write a letter to my mom, I wrote it as if I wasn't yet born and it was more of an instructional letter on how to raise me. This poem has what makes me, me. It has both good and bad. My fears and my goals. I based it off of my experiences that I had to deal with and grow from. It has a reference to suicide.

I wrote this microfiction piece about the pressure of femininity.

As it says in the poem, I really was not sure what to write for this piece. I felt like I really wanted to put an idea down but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was I was trying to express. Finally I decided to just sit down and write. What I created ended up being one of my favorite things I've ever written.

This poem is about my passion for the ocean which has been one of the view things that has remained constant since my youth, and something that inspires me and my creativity everyday.

The internal battle held by women to determine our worth holds us in a parallel to fruit, specifically pit fruit. The idea that the fruit can be bruised and injured, the pit holding the seed of growth representing maternity, and so much more, nestles itself to the perfect metaphor. I found myself feeling very strongly about this subject and was drawn to writing about it- and displaying that raw and almost fearful emotion through it.

This piece is to forgive myself for the forgiveness I owe myself. I have been putting myself through a lot and holding myself from the truth. I am ready to move forward; this piece was a love letter to myself. It is okay to be imperfect and not live up to standards because, either way, I am worthy of myself.

This is an excerpt from a story I’m writing about a girl named Winnie who feels like the only place she belongs is the world of her imagination, where magic is real and people are kind to her.

This piece was based on a story my mother told me about a close friend she made when she was a young adult. It was a lesson she used throughout my childhood to give an example of why I should never change who I am for someone. She never hated on her friend or diminished her, but it was clear in the example that all that ever came from it was losing a sense of yourself. I have always thought about this as I grew up because there were many times when I wanted to change or become different based on who I was around or who I was with at the time. But I always thought back on this example and how making that a habit would serve me no good for the rest of my life.

Endling is a piece that I worked on at the start of the school year, it was originally a micro-fiction that I wasn't too proud of. Once I heard about Creative Youth Awards, I knew that I wanted to be proud of this piece and make it better. I changed this piece into a short story because it had the idea but not the execution. Endling is about a person that has their homeland attacked, and destroyed, and how they were the sole survivor, or endling. I wanted to create a piece where it had an emotional touch, but also a dark ending. I feel proud about this piece and I am grateful that I found out about Creative Youth Awards so I could have a reason to refine this piece.

I write to release my hand of all it holds throughout the day: my book or my pen that constantly balances on the edge of having no ink, my heart when it gets tired from dancing around in my chest, or my tears when they fall too far. I write so that my hand can be held and so that the love I hold for existing can be given to another; so I can give thought a body that can be dreamt of, that can be kissed, and that can be cherished even when my hand can no longer write.

My piece Lonely Spartan was inspired while playing Ubisoft’s famous game series, Assassins Creed as well as my creative writing class. I was playing the Odyssey version of the series where you play as a spartan mercenary fighting to survive in the world of Greek mythology. This inspiration combined with the required action of drinking something, word end, and a maximum of one hundred words, I made this piece. However, I have extended this micro-fiction slightly because I beleive it deserves a better and less abrupt ending to truly tell the story.

a man’s game of tag' concerns the topic of child sex abuse and its connection to religious sin. This work is about a girl who escapes sexual abuse from men with the help of her mother's words and devotion to God. The mother believes that if the girl gets touched by a man, she would have to carry that sin on with her, symbolizing the rules of the classical game, tag. After she turns eighteen, she no longer has the protection of her mom, which later makes her 'it', representing the dangers of being a woman in the world. I was inspired through hearing the sexual harassment experience’s of friends and classmates, which shaped my perspective on the way sexual abuse cases are dealt with by law enforcement. Sexual harassment has become so common that most cases aren’t dealt with appropriately while more women and children become victims. I hope this poem increases knowledge of the reality girls have to experience growing up and how it influences their adult life.

This piece is my experience whether or not I truly know someone. Throughout my life many people have left or excluded me. This poem is meant to express my feelings towards or about those people and how looking forward I want something or someone brighter.

"Spero" follows a young and frightened Mallory as she finds herself stuck in an elevator on what she believes is the most important night of her life. To ground her and keep her from panicking, is Spero, a man unshaken by their situation. He serves as the personification of a lesson I myself, had to learn. This screenplay most integrally tackles the question of anxiety, and more importantly, paints anxiety as a question. It asks the watcher quite simply, why worry if there's nothing you can do to change the situation you are in? Don't spend hours weeping because of something you cannot control. Learn to be grounded in your reality, and let that send you into a brighter tomorrow. I have always struggled with this notion, but while writing this screenplay and truly thinking about it, it felt important. This screenplay went through many drafts, starting out as a commentary on death and the fear of it, but it's final form, to me, is it's strongest and most meaningful. It took many drafts, but in the end it was worth it.

This piece explains the experience I had with an unhealthy relationship in which I was emotionally abused and treated poorly. It conveys the raw emotion of things I wish I could say to that person, and is formatted to look like somebody is venting. I chose this piece because it has a special place in my heart and it’s one of my favorite pieces I’ve written. It was shortened due to the word limit, but my goal is for it to reach others who may have gone through similar experiences.