All Nonfiction
- Bullying
- Books
- Academic
- Author Interviews
- Celebrity interviews
- College Articles
- College Essays
- Educator of the Year
- Heroes
- Interviews
- Memoir
- Personal Experience
- Sports
- Travel & Culture
All Opinions
- Bullying
- Current Events / Politics
- Discrimination
- Drugs / Alcohol / Smoking
- Entertainment / Celebrities
- Environment
- Love / Relationships
- Movies / Music / TV
- Pop Culture / Trends
- School / College
- Social Issues / Civics
- Spirituality / Religion
- Sports / Hobbies
All Hot Topics
- Bullying
- Community Service
- Environment
- Health
- Letters to the Editor
- Pride & Prejudice
- What Matters
- Back
Summer Guide
- Program Links
- Program Reviews
- Back
College Guide
- College Links
- College Reviews
- College Essays
- College Articles
- Back
White Emptiness
I envy poets.
I envy the way
That they can express
Their sorrows and joys
As separate
But equal.
I envy that they mustn't
Be flowery or concise
When swirling two opposites
Into an intertwined truth
Of pure white light
To move and resonate.
I envy the way that I cannot
Be like them.
The romantic inside cannot
Communicate after the years and years
of only logic and only suppressed feelings
My consciousness and freedom
Are weighed down by white emptiness.
I read poetry often now
To find a deeper introspection
My scarred soul couldn’t have concluded
And to indulge in the language of the
Hurt and loved.
I read poems that so vividly paint pictures
And masterfully combine elements of
Persimmons with pipettes
And motherboards with Shostakovich
And wonder why I too cannot fall into a place
Of meta connection, of flowery fullness.
My English teacher can see through me like tissue paper.
She knows I don’t speak the truth in my style.
She knows I spend hours deleting and deleting and fluffing up
Crude sentences into artificial poppies.
She urges me stop and for once, just once, use my true voice
But when I try-- I cannot find it in the depths of nothingness.
All I find is my white hot envy for poets
How they can heal and find themselves
By connecting the pieces of their life puzzles
With a Bic pen and a Dollar Store moleskine.
I struggle to connect the bounds
Of myself into an entity.
Hockey does not flow into biracial
As violin does not flow into math
I don’t fit with her
And she doesn’t fit with me.
Together we are white emptiness.
Christina is a junior at Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, OH. In her free time, she likes to play violin and ice hockey, experiment with new types of writing-- specifically humor that isn’t all that funny and playwriting-- and is a huge classical music nerd. Her work has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and The Incandescent Review.