A Study in Falling By: Emma Cretu

A Study in Falling

What’s left when the most powerful part of your being,
Has been burnt and reduced to practically nothing?
When the wings that once carried you amongst the stars
Were ripped from you, leaving battle scars.

It’s interesting to think what it all felt like, torn off you slowly?
The noise of the action, filling you wholly.
But that’s not how it went in reality, not really
It was done quietly, precise and quickly.

That will never mean that what you felt isn’t true or valid.
This is you then and now, your story, your ballad.
Though it changes everything, like it changes you
It doesn’t change what you can become, what you could do.

What’s left when the most powerful part of your being,
Has been burnt and reduced to practically nothing?
You build wings of a different kind, and you build up a wall
So next time you’re prepared, the next time you fall.

-Emma Cretu

Creative Writing Workshops for Students

Refer to the various items in this shared Google Folder to find out about a variety of opportunities available NOW for students.

Content includes the following:

• Toronto Public Library Teens: Writing Group

• Toronto Public Library Young Writer's Conference
• Registration open now and it fills up quickly!

• Write Across Ontario
• IFOA and LitOntario writing contest
• Closes November 6th!

You can find information - and registration links, where applicable - in the shared Google Folder linked above.

New Student Editors 2017-18

It is with great pleasure and delight that I announce the appointment of Laura Kim and Heather Martin as our new student editors and creative directors for the 2017-18 school year.

Looking forward to a great year of student writing...  culminating in the publication of ESA Letters Vol IV in the spring of 2018.

Pick up your pens and start writing...

Cheers

Ms. Wray

It's Cold, We WIll Sleep Now by Petra Alexson

It’s Cold, We Will Sleep Now

Petra Alexson

Lapidary rabbits create a curl

Of smooth, swept viridian

Fleece foliage

Shut eyes and pilose paws touch ear to ear

In thick, soft grass at the height of sticky clarity

Days of sleet

Mist feeding moisture, covering the star-sheet

They composed the whorl of the forest

Eternal as the cloud seep

Synchronized colour

We fall into sleep

Periodicity by Shenbei Fan

Periodicity

The bosoms of the universe

Spawn a watchful Clock

Eager to end all life

Scorch the Earth with fire

And butcher the soul of man

But it waits, ponders, waits…

The Clock will remain ticking

When evil deeds are done

By mortals upon mortals

Forgiving yet never forgetting

The atrocity of cellularity

The Clock will remain ticking

When lives are lived and wasted

On trite gestures and finite causes

The cunning maker of regret

With boundless room for “sorry”

Never forgetting yet always forgiving…

The Clock will remain ticking

When light becomes darkness

Becomes light becomes…

Like an eternal cyclic wave

Blind to the human psyche

And freed from mortal chains

Everything new will one day become old

And life will be un-born

Earth will be un-created

But the Clock will remain ticking

Gaps

Kira Bentley

“So… what should we do now?” 

His eyes were hopeful. She kept staring at the rubble beneath her shoes. Her sneakers were beat enough for the debris to jab through to her tired feet. 

“We? When was there ever a we?” Distaste coated her tongue like a glob of bubbling black tar. Tears began to flood her eyes, but they still chased the asphalt. 

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. “There was you, and there was me. Never once was there a we.” 

Silence of dusk smothered her admission as a salt-water tear hit the earth with an audible smack. She began to step away, but he quickly grasped her wrist with a softness he never knew he possessed. 

“Please,” he croaked. Tears welled in his eyes as they fell from hers. It became hard to swallow. “I just… I’m sorry.”

He wanted to explain everything so badly; his father, the angriness below their feet, the blood in his veins. His chest was tight with the repression of his voice, but the words, the story, simply flew past him like signs on the highway. 

All he had left was his stagnant two-word apology, an old friend of his strangled tongue. Pathetic. 

She tore her wrist from his pleading hold. Frustration bubbled in her throat as palms curled into fists.

“I want to believe you. I want to believe you so fucking badly.” Her eyes scaled the evening trees and finally poured into his, her crestfallen glare a punch to his stomach. “…It just never ends.”

She was digging; clawing ever so desperately for the answers withheld beyond his soil irises. 

He could’ve sworn he was swimming in the Pacific. 

Hair Power
Endale Facil

For the longest time, I had my hair cut short, so I decided I needed a change. I then decided that it would best if I let my hair grow. The reason why I wanted to do this was because I always found it empowering to see my cousins with their natural hair. Subsequently, I started to think about growing out my own hair and looking for that empowerment in myself. That reflective moment guided my contemplation over the stereotypes of black males with thick natural hair. The stereotype was the affiliation with gangs because of how they looked (whether it was in cornrows, twists etc). Nowadays, if you see rappers or famous singers with braids or with an afro, they tend to sing about sex, drugs and money. Unfortunately, many people (of all races) will then copy and paste this image onto people who look or style their hair in a similar manner. Both of these images are portrayed in the media, but how did this come to be?  Black men have been growing out their hair for centuries, long before these artists even existed. They grew their hair out before the media was created and before gangs were even popular. From royalty to peasants, braids and lengthy hair were, for the most part, a normality. Take King Tewodros for example: This man was one of the most influential people in Ethiopian history. And guess what? He had cornrows! Imagine a black Canadian candidate with cornrows running for office as prime minister. Would you listen to what he has to say or deem him as unsuitable, simply because he doesn’t look professional? The point I’m trying to make is not whether it looks professional or not, but rather that these braids and hairstyles represent so much more than what meets the eye. They represent our history as black men and as black people. Needless to say, braids and afro-like hairstyles are important to me because they represent my culture and my heritage.

King Tewodros