Sriya Tallapragada

Third Place

“Wildflower” (poem)
by Sriya Tallapragada
9th grader at the Pingry School, Basking Ridge
English teacher: Alessandra Finis
Third place award: $100

Wildflower

We wake up to moonlight and madness,
Covered in borrowed dreams
and slippers worn down from trying to run away
This is the town of cloudy hourglasses that keep us silent
Of broken scars and hungry stomachs,
Open wounds full of blood and boutonniere,
Fires that scorch our clothes but not our soul,
Cracked lips and graveyard dirt under our fingernails,
We remember the nights that we would walk barefoot across the breathing soil,
Across the crude tombs marked by baby’s breath,
Waiting for the stars to come out
And when we remember those nights we forgot why we wanted to leave in the first place,
We forgot about the pinched pennies and shattered glass but instead we think about
The poems scrawled across the sidewalk with broken chalk,
The cheap popsicle sticks that drip down our chin and stain our skin blue
And so even when the leaves turn dry we pick each one like a star,
Putting them together like our own little constellations
We, the hoarders of ticket stubs,
But also coffee stained Shakespeare, the letter falling out of our lips
Our tongue is all wrapped up with pretty words to
ever sting firecrackers too cool to swallow
We are still here, in the scattered ash and friday night dances,
In our driveway filled with wilting rose petals
Memorizing the faces on the back of a milk carton
And even when the sonnet turns to stone,
I will still stay, my words adding skins to the earth,
Trading in our gold for wildflowers