2023 Winners

I Want To Live

My chest hurts
Not from crying though
I can’t cry over people who hate me and hate my friends
Not anymore

My chest hurts
It hurts from rage
Rage that it is possible to be so intolerant
To be such a liar
Hiding your cruelty and bigotry behind children
You do not care about children
You do not care about us

My chest hurts
It hurts from disappointment
Disappointment that our land of the free is only free to some
Free to those who fit
Into their cookie cutter shapes
Into their lines and boxes
Into them

My chest hurts
It hurts from grief
Grief that my siblings are being treated as second class
That I am being treated as second class
Second best

My chest hurts
It hurts from fear
Fear that my friends
My family
They aren’t safe
Not here
Not now
They aren’t safe to be who they are
To express who they are
Loudly
Proudly
Openly

My chest hurts from love
Love towards my people
My community
Banding together to fight

To push back
Against those that would rather see us dead
I love them for their resilience
Their strength
Trying again and again
To make people see that we are not a threat
We are not a faceless monster in the dark
We are not an enemy to be wiped out
We are not second class citizens
We are people
With lives
And loves
And hopes and dreams and passions
We deserve to live
To really live
Not just survive in a cookie cutter world

I want to do more than just survive

I want to live

Painting an incongruous lilac sky, with your little sister adding her splotches of hues.
I used to really love the color lilac,
but now I feel that if you took all my
freshly shedded tears,
it would paint the other half of the sky selfsame.

He was 18.
I was babysitting his five-year-old sister.
I said no,
Twice,
But why would he take that for an answer?

I never really understood why in horror movies, the protagonist just stands there,
frozen,
unable to move or even shutter a word.
Why couldn’t they just run away?
Their silhouette stayed scarring the air.
They allowed fear to devour their entire being, and crawl deep beneath their skin.

But I understand now.

I sat in the car ride home swallowed in silence.
Silenced like every girl in this situation.
Yet my voice still found a way to slip through your chokehold.
I found myself in a police station the next day.
I made my official statement.
I’ve talked to therapists and counselors,
and experienced the worst depressive episode of my life.
I’ve missed countless days of school-
and watched my grades fade into warm tones.

I’ve missed my smile.

I’ve missed enjoying hugs from friends and family-
and I hate the way they all say my name now, like I’ll collapse at the slightest change in tone.
I’m a happy, strong girl.
How in the hell were you able to strip my identifying adjectives away in 5 minutes?

To be honest-
Sometimes I just want to hurt you,
but I would hate to pin you the victim.
And instead
I tend to think about my thighs
and how I miss them being untouched by fire.
But maybe fire would burn memories too.

Finally I give up and sit down in the shower, pulling my legs to my chest while hot water attenuates my tears.
Wondering what it would feel like to go under the water and not come up.
At least for a little while.
How would it feel for water to fill my lungs?

How would it feel to die?

You made me have a lot of showers like this.
Drowning in my own thoughts.
The water reminds me of you.
Reminds me that when we’re underwater-
no one can hear us scream.
My hand-
pierced through the surface,
waiting for someone to grab,
someone to pull me out of the crashing waves.

My waves never
stop crashing.

I constantly hope
at the very least
my last breath
is a sigh of relief.

Maybe I did deserve all this?
But I did everything right.
The word “no” was never one that got
caught in the back of my throat.
I pushed you off of me.

I pushed
you
off of
Me.

You’ve got my body weight times three.
God, I wonder who’s gonna win?
Even your fingertips feel heavy,
when they’re magnetized to my skin.
They stain me in every way possible.

And even after all of this,
I spoke up for myself-
to help other women come forward.
I’ve saved the girls in the future you would’ve one day touched.
It sounds like I might win.
But,
It’s been 3 months since I’ve been sexually assaulted-
And you still don’t even know you did it.
No one has talked to you.
No one has taken this seriously.
Everybody’s moved on and left me here,
collecting dust.
Just waiting.
And maybe they thought that if they stopped caring, eventually I would too.
Isn’t our society the one that preaches the perpetual phrases-
“Speak up”
“No means no”

This isn’t urgent I guess.
3 months isn’t that long.
Only
132,000 minutes
of my life
you’ve consumed and ripped away.
And all of this for you to be oblivious.
Isn’t it funny?
Hilarious.
I sit everyday affected by the idea of you putting your hands on my forbidden body once again,
yet you continue to gallop your way through life.

I will forever be the girl I was after you
but never again
can I be the one I was before you.

And at the very least you’ve caused me to write,
and I will write my way out of hell,
I will write my own deliverance.
I will write the breath back into my lungs and erase your fingertips from my freckled skin.
Women,
Our bodies
touched by all the wrong people.
And even water coloring with your five-year- old sister-
We sit in fear
I’m scared
For the voices that will continue to sit and collect dust.
I’m scared for your sister,
for her to grow up in a world where
you think this is okay to do.

I hate you.

But I still desperately want to save her.

And to my sweet Clare, I will see you again.
One day I will rescue you,
and we can watercolor once more.
I pray that you continue to paint us holding hands, and that you keep hanging your artwork above your
bed,
so you can watch us dance as you fall asleep.
We will dance again, I promise.
Let our innocence and youth glow through our skin.
That’s what I love about you sweet girl,
your radiance.
You bring back my girlhood
that he has taken.

It’s been 3 months since I was sexually assaulted,
and I’m fighting the world’s hands off my neck
every day.

This Skin

This black skin is beautiful. This black skin is golden. This black skin is a blessing. This black skin is a curse. This black skin is blessed to wake up in the morning, but this black skin cries every night. See this black skin is talented. This black skin hides the hurt, the pain, the agony, the anxiety, the worry, the poverty, and last but not least this black skin, this black skin hides who it really is. This black skin worries. This black skin is ̈Dad please make it home safe because this black skin, this black skin will take a bullet wound and cover you in blood, faster than you can imagine. ̈

This black skin wants to be seen. This black skin wants to be heard. This black skin eliminates me from opportunities that my peers have around me because this black skin was cursed with ineligibility. This black skin was made to be hated, degraded, and underappreciated.
Who appreciates this black skin? Who values the purpose of this black skin? Better yet, Who lives in this black skin?

A girl. A black girl. This skin latches onto the girl who is surrounded by those who do not know how to tolerate her black skin. This skin was given to the girl who can ́t vocalize how much she is bothered by the actions toward her skin, because this skins reads, . ̈WARNING ̈ This skin. This skin holds the soul of a growing black woman. Who has to work just as hard as the rest. The skin was born to become a nurse, a young mother, a statistic. A fatherless child. This skin, this black skin was born to become forgotten.

How could one ever forget this skin? This skin nurses our babies back to good health. This skin cooks dinner at night. This skin went from boat to boat, field to field, cell to cell, grave to grave. This skin covers fighters. This skin was beaten, bruised, killed, attacked, isolated, confined, gunned down, SILENCED. This skin. This black skin. This black skin wonders why the lady on the elevator clutches her purse once she see ́s this skin. Why the teacher won ́t explain as well as she does to others, once she see ́s this skin. Why every time someone see ́s them with a new style they get questioned, ̈Can I touch it ? ̈ This skin, this black skin is confused.

This black skin wants to be heard. This skin. This black skin wants to be a doctor, a lawyer, a police officer, a guard, a ballerina. This skin, this black skin, just wants to be alive. This skin wants a chance. To show that it can hold the soul of more than just a basketball player, a
rapper, a drug addict, a fatherless child, a graduate. This skin. This black skin. Wants to show the world how it ́s not just a skin. It ́s a girl. A black girl. A young black girl, who is trying. Trying to break the chains of society. Trying to break the cycle. This girl isn ́t just a skin, she’s a student, a hard worker, a child. A black child. Who wants a chance, a chance to show off her skin.