memory

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.

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 cast iron staircase in a restored Russian school is the only original element remaining, holding memories of young women who once descended with diplomas and dreams of freedom.

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 — Old tennis racquets on a wall become a meditation on family members who have passed, their souls imagined playing on star-paved courts.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — Wet seaweed on the beach becomes a meditation on how memories dissolve and return, forming patterns in the sand as they dry.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — A young poet traces Dostoevsky's footsteps through his former spaces, feeling his presence in stairs, doors, and pages as a white night falls on St. Petersburg.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — A girl visits her ancestors' graves in St. Petersburg, encountering a man who offers water to wash the stones, and wonders about the Russia she might have known.

Poetry·Analise Braddock, age 9 — A baby named Daisy visits a rocking chair in the woods daily until vines overtake it and it disappears, leaving only memory.

Poetry·Juliet Del Fabbro, age 11 — Cool summer nights become a canvas where stars rewrite the world, breezes snake through ivy, and memory crystallizes into art.