CLINE, ADELAIDE
Adelaide Cline
Age: 16, Grade: 11
School Name: Saint Ann’s School, Brooklyn, NY
Educator: Marty Skoble
Category: Poetry
Carve the corners of your body
The hot breath of something behind you
The way it haunts youBrushing your skin like the wisp of a bug
A bug out of its element
In yours
Scraped the side of your brain
The edge of your lips —
And you miss the sparks
The ones we used to bathe in
Because we had nothing better to do
If you let it — it could take you away
Carve the corners of your body
So you never remember anything else
Not empty, but something new
We used to let the love jump off us like lice
We let it spread
And ruin
The raw became the over cooked
And we danced through the crust
As if we could brush it off
Make burnt toast bread again
We couldn’t and we still can’t
The still water boiled
And became a tsunami
No swimming
No sinking