Quetzal's Song
Claribel C.
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This writing piece is one I hope you read more than once. It represents the day that ICE and The National Guard were supposed to be deployed to San Francisco but were called off. I wanted to challenge myself to write something that mixed fantasy and reality, to capture how surreal that moment was. I chose to center the story around the Quetzal because it already is a strong symbol of freedom. On my first draft I debated how to depict the agents in a fictitious way. At first I thought of emphasizing only their ruthlessness but I realized I needed a way to show their human complexity. Which is why I ended up portraying the agents as Quetzal’s but “tainted by misfortune.”
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Creative writing is to paint a picture with words, to describe the indescribable. Creating something because you want to not because you have to. Creativity is that pull toward picking up the pencil or opening the notes app on your phone or setting your fingers on the keyboard.
