By Grace Sumabat Estrada -- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways I love thee with the bated breath of anticipation, Unburdened by shadows of doubt. I love thee with untethered confidence In your perfection and unquestioned clout. As the first of your generation, You’re the seed of unshakable faith. You’ll blaze your own path to glory, Setting your own tone and pace. I love thee with the peace of wisdom, Unbothered by storms that will pass. Trusting the stronghold

By Grace Sumabat Estrada -- Em’rald hills beckon Joyful return within reach Nerves beneath the scene Leaves crunch, trees asway Morning dew kiss greets the day Fresh role to glean Mem’ries cascading Friendly faces, welcome smiles Home at Evergreen!

By Noey B -- Click. I took the shot. Just came rolling uphill from Mt Pleasant High School. I went to the shopping center at White and Story back in December, yet my wheels treaded further towards Grand Century Mall. Go back an hour, I was getting flicks of residentials ‘cause the SAN JOSE TRIP required that nostalgia. Therefore I cruised through the East Side from Evergreen to Alum Rock. Land owners don’t mind the skies with satellites and three-hundred-sixty-degree cameras

By Noey B -- NOEY: After leaving [____] for a local event, I was scheduled to go to a different award ceremony only ten minutes away by car. I called my mom to ask for an Uber, but she was “busy” and my app wasn’t working at the time. So I thought, it’s only a few extra minutes, and I snagged the opportunity to capture street photography as I strolled by the Fairgrounds. N: The sidewalk pavement was filled with cracks and the buildings faded into grays. My eyes, offset by the

By Jayce Bayani [First place] -- My mother has only hit me three times in my life. Me, her only daughter. The first time was when I was 12. I exposed her boyfriend at the time for what he really was: a snake. A vile, good-for-nothing bastard. A shitstain unworthy of the ink I write this on. Back in those days, Nightswood was the biggest town in Paulson County, West Virginia. It was a sleepy town with a decent main street. Old folks would make it their mission to play bingo

By MG Allan [Second place] -- Jasper found the manuscript on a flash drive that had been shoved in the back of a drawer in Morty’s desk. This was almost six months after Morty’s heart attack. It took Jasper that long to feel emotionally stable enough to really go through Morty’s things. Jasper had left his late husband’s office like a shrine, gathering dust to weight down all the memories. He could barely walk into the room without breaking into sobs. More than any other

By Ethan Le [First place] -- The century teaches us to rely on robotics, playing friendly with an artificial being. We celebrate machines that string words together, while children in Gaza string empty water bottles across scorched courtyards, praying for a drop of rain in the barren wasteland. Knowledge once asked us to sweat, to wrestle with silence, to carve meaning by hand. Now we drift, weightless, our thoughts prefabricated, our days dissolving into the hum of servers.

By Yutzil Virgen -- Inside me, a fire burns– shadows whisper vengeance, fists of anger clenched around what once was sweet. My heart hides itself behind walls I built from fear, searching the echoes for the reflection of who I used to be. Once I was a warm river, a light that embraced, hands open to forgiveness, a voice that quieted storms. Now I walk among ruins, bitter like forgotten fruit, and I cry out to the heavens: “Do not let me fall.” I am the daughter of an eternal

By Yutzil Virgen -- I walk with both hands full– one cradling a flame, the other gripping darkness. The fire burns, a fragile warmth against the wind, reminding me I am still alive. The shadow pulls, a heavy tether to everything I've lost. I am both the lantern and the eclipse, both the hope and the wound. To love me is to hold both– the light I offer, the shadows I hide. And still, I keep walking with both hands full.

By Yutzil Virgen -- We build our temple from trembling hands, stone by stone, word by word, until it reached the sky. But you set fire to it, until even stone learned how to burn, dancing in the glow while I choked on the smoke. Every vow we whispered, cracked and crumbled, falling like prayers turned to dust. Now I carry the ruin– blood on my palms, ashes in my hair, a cathedral of grief where love once knelt. And still, my heart insists on beating in the silence, searching

By Yutzil Virgen [Second place] -- A horn blares somewhere behind me. Metal against metal. Voices shouting across the street. The sound pulls me back into my body. The light has turned green, yet I remain still, hands resting on the steering wheel, staring down a street filled with places I once called love. Three restaurants sit on the same block. From where I’m parked, I can see each of them if I lean forward just enough. It’s strange how every time I pass this street, my

By Robert Beveridge -- She let her hair pile up put off the stylist once again looked in the mirror next morning found a chestnut mountain atop her head

By Charisse Smith -- If you only knew how many times my life has been rewritten by someone else’s pen, you might understand why telling my own story matters so much to me. People often meet me and see only the present version of who I am—a woman who stands with strength and determination. What they cannot see are the chapters that came before. They cannot see the storms that shaped that strength or the silence that sometimes followed those storms. My story began when I was ve

By Charisse Smith -- I have walked through storms most people only read about. Foster care. Separation. Cancer. Silence. Each one tried to bend my spirit. But something stronger lived inside me. Faith. Not the kind spoken comfortably in bright rooms. The kind born on bathroom floors between tears and prayers. Every storm said “this will break you.” And every time I stood back up. Still breathing. Still believing. Still standing.

By Charisse Smith -- They tried to silence her with reports. They tried to label her with diagnoses. They tried to confine her inside other people’s definitions. But they misunderstood the nature of survival. Some women collapse under pressure. Others become steel. She carried pain without letting it poison her. She carried faith through every dark season. And when the storms passed the world saw something unexpected— A woman who refused to disappear. A woman still rising. Th

By Charisse Smith -- They wrote my childhood in ink and folders. Case numbers. Reports. Evaluations. A file thicker than the years I had lived. To them I was documentation. To me I was a child watching strangers decide my future. They studied my family like a problem to solve. But they never wrote down my strength. They never recorded how survival grows quietly inside a child who refuses to disappear. They gave me a number. But I became a voice.

By Charisse Smith -- They said I was crazy. Funny how people use that word when they don’t understand a mind that refuses to break. They saw rebellion where I saw survival. They saw anger where I saw truth. They saw resistance where I saw dignity. They tried to write my life in files and diagnoses as if a human soul could be summarized in paperwork. But here’s the truth. A crazy mind doesn’t keep fighting when the whole world expects it to collapse. A crazy mind d

By Charisse Smith -- Growing up inside the child welfare system meant learning early that not every authority figure saw me the same way I saw myself. As a child, I did not yet have the language to describe racism or systemic bias. What I understood instead was a feeling—an invisible distance between the people making decisions and the life they were deciding for me. Most of the caseworkers and supervisors who handled my file were white, and I was a Black girl whose family hi

By Brooklyn Porter -- Based on Crime and Punishment By Fyodor Dostoevsky What Have You Done? “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.” — H. L. Mencken Swirling blackness, All engulfing Struggling for air, To breathe Deepest darkness, Drowning me Overcome and Sinking down Never to rise Ever again But the spell Is broken I am free, awake, And alive I lay still, Eyes wide I draw in air, So sweet Everything so normal, And unchanged Yet a nagging,

By Ethan Le -- I wander empty rooms, mourning my beloved. I carry a glass mannequin, her fragile limbs trembling in my arms. I hug her tight, craving warmth, craving presence. I dropped her. I lost her again. Oh, Selene, why? I plead. I do not care. I grab the shards, hugging them once more. They pierce my chest, embedding in my lungs, slicing through a heart still stubbornly beating. Blood mixes with sorrow, but I do not let go. I whisper apologies to no one. The glass weep