A huge thank you to all who took the time to enter the 2024 Solano County Library Teen Writing Contest!

We were honored to read your work, and encourage each of you to continue writing.

Please enjoy the winning entry below!

POETRY WINNER

 

To Bones They Burn

by Julianna M. Coram

 

She’s in front of me walking on these hot coals.

So hot that each step she takes the  coals stick to her feet, fuse with her flesh,

melt into her skin till they reach her bone.

I say to her “Turn around, look at me”.

She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t look.

She starts to walk faster.

I follow her.

I put my feet on the coals, to my bones they burn.

One foot in front of the other.

Thats what I have to think, what I have to tell myself.

She’s still in front of me but now she’s in this beautiful white dress.

The type I can only dream of wearing but then again everything

that has to do with her is a dream now.

My voice shakes like her feet as the  coals detach from her  flesh, from her bone.

I say “Turn around, look at me”

She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t look.

She walks faster, I follow.

One foot in front of the other.

I couldn’t tell you how but she’s still in front of me,

in the dress of my dreams blood stains at the bottom.

Icarus.

That’s what I call her.

That’s the only name that fits.

The only name that seems to capture her mindless stride to her death pledge.

Pulsing like her blood ridden feet, my voice comes.

I say to her, No, I scream to her “ Turn around, Look at me”.

She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t look.

She starts to run.

I  take the name of Icarus and rename her the sun.

Not because I was ever too close to her but because

just like him with flesh as my beeswax wings im a fool chasing the unattainable.

I stop.

I close my eyes and let the world move without me for a minute.

When I open them she’s not in front of me, or behind me, or beside me.

She’s under me.

There she lays in a beautiful white coffin.

“Look at me. Dig yourself up from the dirt  and look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”

I screech   “Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”

I  repeated  my words like a prayer. Screeching them till my ears bleed like my feet.

She never turned, she never looked.

She never saw me.