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      May 25, 2019Summer DaysAngélica Borrego

      The days are getting longer
      The shorts are getting shorter
      The taste of freedom on my tongue
      Like lemon
      The taste of summer
      That warms your bones
      And freckles your cheeks
      Scraped knees
      The sound of chalk against cement
      Surrounds you
      Like a hand meant to be held
      These longer days
      These shorter shorts
      They’re signs
      Of self-determination
      Of throwing away the rulers that measure our skirts
      Of tearing up the homework that stresses out minds
      And starves us of creativity
      My shoulders are not a distraction
      But the boy holding a gun to my head is
      We fear not education
      But the lack-thereof that fills the seats of democracy
      Our hands are held to the sun
      In an act of self-preservation
      And fear
      For our generation
      Straining our voices
      But their backs are turned
      And our words don’t reach them
      We are the lost hope
      The age of renegade

      from 2019 RYPA

      Angélica Borrego (age 14)

      Why do you like to write poetry?

      “In fourth-grade English, my SAIL teacher decided that the next unit we would be doing would focus primarily on different types of poetry. To me, poetry was funny words that rhyme, spoke of dogs or feeling happy. I didn’t understand the depth that could be uncovered with a few scribbled lines on a crumpled piece of paper. So on the first day of the unit, we were all less than excited. We were given a small yellow paperback with the pages trying to free themselves from the aged binding. I don’t remember that title, just the scent of the cream-tinted pages that spoke of many years of use. She told us we’d be reading a few poems each day and talking about the meaning hidden behind pretentious synonyms and alliterations, and try to place the poem into a category. I only knew of two types of poems: those that made you giggle or those that made you crease your eyebrows in confusion. All that we read fit into the latter. We went about the monotonous task of placing poem by poem into the different categories, and I found myself hating poetry and the confusion each class brought. Sensing our indifference towards the subject, the teacher played for us a TED talk from an author whose name has long since escaped my memory about a topic I will never forget: poetry. The middle-aged man spoke of writing in a way I’d never heard, with a passion that coated each syllable that sent his words swirling through the air and settling on the minds of the impressionable children crowded around the computer screen. He said that poetry came from your soul not your heart. That true poetry didn’t need to rhyme, that standalone themes would carry our words to the tune of music. I will never forget the man whose booming voice reached through the video and shook me in my seat. Write! he pleaded, about anything and about everything, don’t hide behind rules and write freely and with raw passion. I would, that year, take his words to heart and wrote as often as I could. I filled small journals that I carried everywhere, I filled the margins of assignments with sonnets to be later copied down. It was just a TED talk, meant to inspire the class to finish the unit without interruption, but it was so much more.”