the passage of time

Poetry·Madeleine Palter — A prose poem captures the sensory landscape of a neighborhood street through wind, racing cars, crunching leaves, gossip, and flickering streetlights.

Poetry·Satya Villacorta — A rock on a cliff observes the forest through a day, finding richness in stillness as the world below bustles on.

Story·Eleazar Reiner — A girl watches a mysterious violin player who controls the seasons, inherits her legacy when she dies, and years later discovers her own way to keep the music alive through...

Personal Narrative·Mia Xu — A girl who missed last year's snow savors an early morning walk with her dog through fresh snowfall, reflecting on how scarcity makes things precious.

Poetry·Kieran Fong — A poem traces the cycle from evening through night to dawn, observing how moonlight and starlight transform the landscape before sunrise returns.

Story·Deeksha Rajesh — A soldier on a battlefield, carrying photos from fallen comrades, hesitates to shoot an enemy and is killed, choosing to let another's future persist over his own.

Story·Celia Chen — A little fir tree wishes for grandeur, gets cut down to become a Christmas tree, then longs for his simple forest life when discarded after the holiday.

Personal Narrative·Georgia Marshall — A granddaughter interviews her grandfather about his 44-year career at a college, discovering how he embodied the parable of the third stonemason who built cathedrals.

Poetry·Daniel Shorten — A clock contemplates its endless mechanical existence, questioning why humans created it to mark time in perpetual, lonely repetition.

Poetry·Steven Cavros — An abstract meditation on the invisible and forgotten, those who lived and died without being seen or remembered by the living.