Evolution by Zoe Nelles
Painting
A New Beginning by Ari McKellin
Fiction
It’s like my hands can’t remember how to write, but my mind knows I can. I place my hands on my keyboard, begging my fingers to skate across the keys like they used to all those years ago.
I can’t remember specifically why I stopped writing. My only guess is because I got too busy. But aren’t I always busy? I have been using that excuse for years. If I keep using “busy” as an excuse, I will never get around to doing what I love: writing. Everyone around me always told me to keep writing because the words that flowed through my fingertips and arranged themselves into an art moved them. It spoke to them. It changed them. But since then, writing has sunk to the bottom of my priority list, and with it, my inspiration.
Last week, I visited my old English classroom from middle school where I first fell in love with the art of writing. I hesitantly turned the frigid handle as excitement and anxiety bubbled over me. I hadn’t been in this room for so long. Stepping foot into the room, the lights were on, but no one was in sight. Everything looked the same. The desks were in eight pods of four, scattered around the back third of the room, a stained chestnut wooden podium near the door. The windows across from me revealed the golden sunset. It was a strange kind of comfort. My eyes danced around the room. As a paper in the back of the room caught my eye, I squinted. There was a familiarity about the format of the text. It hit me. It was my poem that my teacher had decided to use as an example for other classes all those years ago. A strange feeling that I can only describe as warmth and pride came over me. A wave of nostalgia washed over me. I beamed as memories came flooding back about the challenges I had when I tried to do my best work and it didn’t turn out well, but I learned from my mistakes and improved. It catapulted me to the day when my teacher told me my poems were really good and encouraged me to keep writing. That same day was when she introduced me to a nationwide poetry competition. A few months later, she congratulated me when I discovered I was going to be published along with 20% of the best poems from student poets who submitted. Coming back to reality, I knew what I had to do: pull up Google Docs and brush off the dust it had been gathering.
For years after those moments in sixth grade, I wrote and no one could stop me. I wrote between class periods, during class, and at home in the middle of the night. Midnight is when I believe creativity thrives and bursts out of a person. It can become difficult to find time to dwell in your own thoughts and reflect on your day and how you feel. Writing was my way of speaking when I couldn’t use my voice. Writing was my way of releasing everything that was bottling up inside me. Writing was what kept me from exploding. But, around sophomore year, I slowed down. Homework multiplied, I joined a half-dozen clubs, and I had substantially more commitments than middle school. Suddenly, a familiar feeling overcame me like an old friend. New ideas came in overwhelming waves, flooding my mind.
Spinning on my right foot out of the classroom, I swerved through the narrow halls and out the scarlet-red double-doors, too impatient to ensure the classroom door closed all the way. As I speed-walked to my car and raced home in my jet black Honda Odyssey 1997, a poem arranged itself in my mind—a new stanza completed at each stop light and stop sign. Entering my suburban neighborhood by the highway—the two only separated by a chain fence—my driveway quickly approached as the urgency to transfer the words from my mind to my computer soared. Slamming the car door and racing up the front steps, I swung the door open, not bothering to close it before taking the stairs two at a time to my room where my computer lay on my cluttered desk across from my bedroom door. Flipping my MacBook Air computer screen up, I opened Google Docs and frantically created a new document before the words were forgotten forever.
“I abandoned a friend / Because I was too busy. / Too busy / To go on adventures. / Too busy / To travel to / Another world / Without moving an inch. / Too busy / to hear stories / Of character’s dreams / Coming true. / I can’t imagine a better way / To experience years, / Someone else’s life, / And a wearying journey / In merely a few hours.”
Taking a deep breath, my heart slowed to a steady thumping. I knew it wasn’t my best piece, but I had to cut myself some slack. It had, after all, been years since I was motivated to write what I desired. That familiar feeling came back. That pride came back. This was the start of a new beginning—a new season of writing.
I can’t remember specifically why I stopped writing. My only guess is because I got too busy. But aren’t I always busy? I have been using that excuse for years. If I keep using “busy” as an excuse, I will never get around to doing what I love: writing. Everyone around me always told me to keep writing because the words that flowed through my fingertips and arranged themselves into an art moved them. It spoke to them. It changed them. But since then, writing has sunk to the bottom of my priority list, and with it, my inspiration.
Last week, I visited my old English classroom from middle school where I first fell in love with the art of writing. I hesitantly turned the frigid handle as excitement and anxiety bubbled over me. I hadn’t been in this room for so long. Stepping foot into the room, the lights were on, but no one was in sight. Everything looked the same. The desks were in eight pods of four, scattered around the back third of the room, a stained chestnut wooden podium near the door. The windows across from me revealed the golden sunset. It was a strange kind of comfort. My eyes danced around the room. As a paper in the back of the room caught my eye, I squinted. There was a familiarity about the format of the text. It hit me. It was my poem that my teacher had decided to use as an example for other classes all those years ago. A strange feeling that I can only describe as warmth and pride came over me. A wave of nostalgia washed over me. I beamed as memories came flooding back about the challenges I had when I tried to do my best work and it didn’t turn out well, but I learned from my mistakes and improved. It catapulted me to the day when my teacher told me my poems were really good and encouraged me to keep writing. That same day was when she introduced me to a nationwide poetry competition. A few months later, she congratulated me when I discovered I was going to be published along with 20% of the best poems from student poets who submitted. Coming back to reality, I knew what I had to do: pull up Google Docs and brush off the dust it had been gathering.
For years after those moments in sixth grade, I wrote and no one could stop me. I wrote between class periods, during class, and at home in the middle of the night. Midnight is when I believe creativity thrives and bursts out of a person. It can become difficult to find time to dwell in your own thoughts and reflect on your day and how you feel. Writing was my way of speaking when I couldn’t use my voice. Writing was my way of releasing everything that was bottling up inside me. Writing was what kept me from exploding. But, around sophomore year, I slowed down. Homework multiplied, I joined a half-dozen clubs, and I had substantially more commitments than middle school. Suddenly, a familiar feeling overcame me like an old friend. New ideas came in overwhelming waves, flooding my mind.
Spinning on my right foot out of the classroom, I swerved through the narrow halls and out the scarlet-red double-doors, too impatient to ensure the classroom door closed all the way. As I speed-walked to my car and raced home in my jet black Honda Odyssey 1997, a poem arranged itself in my mind—a new stanza completed at each stop light and stop sign. Entering my suburban neighborhood by the highway—the two only separated by a chain fence—my driveway quickly approached as the urgency to transfer the words from my mind to my computer soared. Slamming the car door and racing up the front steps, I swung the door open, not bothering to close it before taking the stairs two at a time to my room where my computer lay on my cluttered desk across from my bedroom door. Flipping my MacBook Air computer screen up, I opened Google Docs and frantically created a new document before the words were forgotten forever.
“I abandoned a friend / Because I was too busy. / Too busy / To go on adventures. / Too busy / To travel to / Another world / Without moving an inch. / Too busy / to hear stories / Of character’s dreams / Coming true. / I can’t imagine a better way / To experience years, / Someone else’s life, / And a wearying journey / In merely a few hours.”
Taking a deep breath, my heart slowed to a steady thumping. I knew it wasn’t my best piece, but I had to cut myself some slack. It had, after all, been years since I was motivated to write what I desired. That familiar feeling came back. That pride came back. This was the start of a new beginning—a new season of writing.