death

Story·Ella Yamamura, age 12 — A girl struggles for three years to answer her teacher's question about her future dreams, only finding an answer after the teacher's death.

Story·Sydney Burr, age 13 — A girl waits in a sweltering car while her mother fights with broken gas pumps, her stream-of-consciousness revealing the death of her brother Joel and her parents' bitter divorce.

Story·Kyler Min, age 8 — On planet Kepler-22b, students compete for honors status while their alien parents work light-years away, until a boy discovers the dark truth behind 'organic' education.

Poetry·Daniel Shorten, age 9 — A child's fragmented memories of a play or film screening blur with overheard dialogue, creating an unsettling meditation on mortality and childhood observation.

Poetry·Teddy Lykouretzos, age 13 — A young poet compares plastic's permanence to the pyramids, warning that our disposable creations outlast monuments while poisoning the earth we depend on.

Personal Narrative·Ilina Chaudhury, age 11 — A four-year-old visits her grandmother in India and gradually understands what death means when her grandmother dies of cancer during the trip.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — A young visitor to Sobibór death camp touches the train tracks and imagines herself as a child searching for murdered parents.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — A walk on a grey path reveals falling snow alongside violence and grief, prompting wonder at snow's peaceful clarity amid human suffering.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — On New Year's Eve in Pucón, local teenagers slaughter a lamb for tourists' supper while a volcano erupts, creating a moment of apocalyptic tension.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — Old tennis racquets on a wall become a meditation on family members who have passed, their souls imagined playing on star-paved courts.