by Clara Johnson ’26 on January 22, 2026

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Portfolio - Prose

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A Fragment of a Memory

I must have been a little thing to be so tangled in my mom’s arms. I must have been so small.
It is night. We rock back and forth in the blue rocking chair in the corner of the dark room. Shadowed branches scratch the windows and thunder gurgles, though no rain falls, not yet.
Scritch…Scratch…Rumble
It is night, and the thunder cracks this time, and the branches slam a little harder on the window. I feel the rumble in my throat and my stomach. I let out a little yelp, and my hands clench against the yellow plastic sippy cup.
It is night. It is stormy, but she feels like golden afternoon. She pulls me closer to her. She smells like old books and cinnamon tea. She smells like hot chocolate in my yellow plastic sippy cup. I must have been so small to be tangled in her ringlets.
It is night, and she does not sing. She does not sing except for one song every night. A single, listless note, high and sweet to drown out the storm
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
Mama, what happened?

My Old Oak Tree

Weathered and tethered we return to the fields in the woods behind my parents’ house where once my bare feet squelched on soggy earth.
Where once there was a gateway to a deciduous world abounding in the hazy ecstasy of wonder which twisted through the stalwart poplars. That haze which entangled with the wildflowers at their base. Where once fairies wound flowers through my hair and daylight danced and flecked over the woods. Where once, we were warriors and mermaids and mages.
Where once, the oak tree stood.
But now we return, my sister and I, taller and with backs more rigid.
The wind whispers through the wooden squadron and softens their fragility into gentleness like mother’s arms, swaying and waving and staying. Like mother’s arms wrapped around you in the old blue rocking chair, smelling like cinnamon and paper. The wind like mother’s voice,
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
Early in the morning, when the sun is still peaking and glancing, the dawn creaks, and the old mingles with the dawning new. The crickets croak on, and night owls still croon, and the moon holds steady above. But the sun haloes the horizon, and the morning doves chirp too, and mingle with the night sounds.
Everything is cast in gold or maybe silver, cast in the surreal light of almost.
So we return, my sister and I, to collect wildflowers from the fields in the woods behind our house.
Behind our old house.
We sink our feet into the earth like yesterday and tread over leaves dried and fallen, their crunch softened to a rustle by the fall of early spring rains. It smells like rain too, like rain on the earth. What is that smell? Someone told me once it’s bacteria in the soil that the rain coaxes or wrenches into the air, but someone else told me it’s the blood of god defused—how different are those things anyway? Wildflowers peak through the rotting leaves, which smell like bacteria or maybe god. They press on, undaunted by the decay, the winsome smell of almost. We will put the wildflowers in glass bottles of my favorite peach tea and press them in thin pages of my mother’s Bible to capture them, in the moment between.
How long can we stay here between, before the sun crests and the wildflowers die?
How long can we stay here…before we have to move?
How long do you think?
How long?

by Riley Londraville ’27 on December 11, 2025

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Portfolio - Poetry

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The cafe’s website read: Bring in a nonperishable food or a personal care item, we’ll cover half
your tab, and we’ll match your donation, item for item.

A chance she couldn’t pass up. The girl notices a stain on the cement outside the cafe and
wonders where it came from. It could be red wine or something more sinister. Inside, she takes
note of the pin on the jacket of the man who stands in front of her. Make America Great Again.

She wonders when it was so great.

Yesterday, she had watched footage from 1963 in Birmingham, AL. The Children’s Crusade. Torn skin and flesh flushed. Pressure piercing through fire hoses. Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

And later, she saw a video filmed by shaky hands. Skin is still torn on pavement today. Rusted
stains leaving people wondering: Is it red wine or something more sinister?

“Ma! Ma!” the boy cried out, trying to stabilize the camera. Useless evidence without due
process. He sounds young, although the youth in his voice could be his primal fear taking over, deprivation of nurture on the line as his mother’s face scrapes across cement and crimson fills the cracks. Pebbles stab in her skin and her mouth and her palms.

“I have papers,” she says to nobody. The ICE agent readjusts his mask. It almost slipped while he was just doing his job. Making America Great Again.

In line, the girl holds a can of chicken breast that her grandma had sent her to college with.

“You’ll need it,” her grandma said, but the girl didn’t believe she would open the can. They were both right. This was the last day of the promotion. A nine dollar coffee becomes $4.50, and a family without their regular SNAP benefits can have some canned chicken breast. What she refused to eat is another’s fortune. Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

At the counter, she asks the barista for a latte

“Hot or iced?”

Anything but ice.

Make America Great Again.

The barista tells her she can drop her can in the box up front with the rest. Aluminum spills out of cardboard, but she had hoped for more. It’s been eight days without money loaded onto EBT cards, and the president threw a party. Jewels drip from skin in giant glasses. Flappers strutting by, their lavish headpieces held high. Feathers float to the floor as the billionaires grin and mothers can’t buy formula. The girl just learned that children make up 39 percent of all SNAP benefit recipients. Another Children’s Crusade. Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

The girl walks past the stained cement on her way out. She hopes it’s red wine, not something more sinister. She wonders if those billionaires would notice, if their expressions would even change. They’re too far gone, she decides. Drunk with greed, their stoned faces would stay cold as ice.

Make America Great Again.

by Grace Pappadellis ’29 on December 11, 2025

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Portfolio - Poetry

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Fitful night sleep,

flitting of birds,

they dance like tree ornaments in a cove of blonde light.

I watch from my window,

the streets are bleak and clean.

Will the snow fall as it did last year?

My lively breath has been rapid and full of anguish,

let me stare at the sky.

A glimpse of a star

created a blanket for my heart, a quilt of fabric, spun from moonlight,

the fairytales you read about,

threads of light, feathers, flakes of ice and snow.

Spun around, fast and blizzard-like,

the colors are tangible, clear, the material falls over me,

protective, sheeny, its magic cures me of my restlessness.

I can sleep with the intertwinement, the rays of the moon, all in one place.

I don’t need snow as I did last season.

I would never turn down its arrival,

only delegate it as another layer.

Moonlight trickles in through my window,

Winter will never be the same.

by Ian Gualtiere ’27 on November 20, 2025

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Portfolio

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Enter the chorus of children; octaves fill
the empty halls of pews. There are no ill
feelings towards their parents who miss
the show: they work hard and slip a kiss
here or two. While we wait for the hands
of guardians to praise the tones and band
that line the walls, the roads are silent.
Snowfall dots the lane, but we can see giant
clumps of white pushed across the way.
The wait for a melting sun to return one day.
Ring, ring the world anew, flush the dirt.
We should all send a message of hurt,
ripped pages, that follow broken fingers
of bellboys who work behind the thinkers
of their age. The unheard voices of dawn
continue through the black, their life gone
with the sun; their dreams done with light.
Now, we enter into a world of constant spite.
Bells rung, songs sung, as the parents bring
siblings to the concert, sudden cries spring
from the crowd. A silent night, a holy hour,
to show us the wonderful divine power.
One that transcends the prayer books
and conductors—it offers a pretty look.
Sit down for a while, listen, and listen true
to the songs that will bring you anew.

by Riley Londraville ’27 on October 30, 2025

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Portfolio

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I served him starfish and coffee while Dad told him how they weren’t supposed to meet this way

They were supposed to meet years ago when Dad’s best friend, Neftalie, made fake press passes and snuck into Prince’s house party, where they partied under a moon like this one

My dad was too chicken to go, and Neftalie was too chicken to say hello

But Prince sits here now as the purple rain pummels the pavement and butterscotch clouds hide the celestial glow

Dad hasn’t washed his hand since that concert he went to all those years ago

He practically cut his arm off and framed it once people began calling to pay their respects and offer their condolences

But now he’s set his mind free, and now he understands

Starfish and coffee

Maple syrup and jam

Prince will be gone once the smoke clears, the high wears off, and the record stops spinning

But for now, he takes off his raspberry beret and keeps on singing.

by Ella Bloom ’27 on October 23, 2025

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Portfolio

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The lonesome traveler
With only his pack to tie him to the earth
Sees the tracks of those who came before
Yet decides to turn the opposite way
He carves his footprints into the land
The same way the bear digs his claws into the bark
I own this land
Each step says

He knows not of this world
Of the grasses that have grown long before he swept through them
Of the branches that have extended from the trees long before they fed his fire
Of the water that has traveled thousands of miles long before reaching his lips

He knows not of the land
And its withstanding grace
Of its willingness to remain within time, within place
He sees the deer and wonders which will be the first to go
Yet their tracks are his only hope of finding life amidst the snow

He does not stop to breathe
Does not pause in the least
Like the harsh hand of winter he never seems to cease
In his pollution
His destruction
Of a world we’ll never know
A world of plains and streams and farmlands oversown
He believes his footprints are a God-given right,
Are the freedom that bobs above him like a kite
For the beauty of an untouched world is no different than a bountiful tree
A potential that many may conquer
Yet few will ever see.

by Sydney Cloutier ’27 on October 23, 2025

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Portfolio

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Pieces of the sky float down to the earth in little white specks, piling up on the road in front of me. Toe-to-heel and heel-to-toe, I walk one foot in front of the other, hands stuffed into my pockets. The silent white world echoes each footfall. The dust from up above kisses my skin as it falls onto my cheeks with care. The darkness that has swallowed up the sun hugs the tall pines on either side of the road, casting shadows in the night. The lack of light deceives me for just a moment, allowing me to forget. I let the relief of that moment flood my senses and soothe the chill that has begun to creep up on me. I continue to disrupt the cold white clouds that have grown thicker on the road with each step I take. Each time my foot meets the ground a small puff of smoke surrounds where I used to be. In an hour or so, the footprints will have disappeared. The fallen sky will hide any evidence that I was here. That I once stood amongst these trees and walked along this road. The trees won’t remember me or the vapor that erupts from my mouth with every sharp exhale. In an hour or so, the sun will rise on this white-coated landscape, bathing the world in pink and orange light. Sunlight will filter through the pine needles and create hopeful silhouettes on the road. In an hour or so, I will flee from the cold that now sits in my bones and forces my teeth to clatter. I will no longer have to worry about the overdue rent or fixing up the totaled car I left four miles back. In an hour or so, the snow will envelop me and the sun will peek up over the horizon, showering the world in light that I will never see.  

by Grace Pappadellis ’29 on October 23, 2025

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Portfolio

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The first sip,
I drink in solace.
Piping hot,
sweet cream, coats my throat.

The mug burns,
there’s a slight bitterness.
It’s only real,
it’s only fresh, plain, how it’s supposed to be.

To wake up to the warmth,
every season passes like winded clouds,
across the sky,
I clutch my cup, stare out the window with wonder.

The liquid feels like music,
thrumming through my veins,
replenishing my spirit,
it sends signals to my tasks.

Every day, on repeat.
The spoon swirls,
the color softens.
All through this winter, my bones will have blankets.

by Anna Gambone ’27 on October 9, 2025

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Portfolio

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Sun melts to sky
Bowing down
Bleeding her orange
Ending a day of shine

Can life’s decline be as beautiful
Sink back from which we came
Born tall, forced to shrink

Watch one person fade to night
Sadly over, but glimmering in ripples
Stars remind us of the sky’s refusal to cease

I will trace constellations how I trace our memories
Painting the picture where it looks best
Some light may shine in the end
Melting to sky

by Riley Londraville ’27 on October 9, 2025

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Portfolio

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As a child, you imagined what would happen if a shooter came into your classroom right in the middle of Mrs. Knox’s lesson on long division, and how you would pick up the chair closest to you, and your adrenaline would kick in, and you’d hit him over the head and knock him out, and shield him from the rest of your classmates, and if you couldn’t get to the chair in time, you would stab him with pencils and at least injure him, and that could distract him while your classmates got away, or maybe if he was still in the hall you could barricade the door with the bookshelf and keep everyone calm and quiet until the moment you could all sneak out a window and do what they had always taught you to do in the drills, the drills in which you would hide, trying not to laugh as the principal came over the loudspeaker, “This is a drill, I REPEAT, THIS IS A DRILL,” and because it was a drill and you all knew it was a drill, you treated it like a drill, because how do you act as though your life is truly in danger, and everyone around you could die at any moment, you hide, if you have to, if he’s too close, but if you can save yourself you run, in a zig-zag of course, you can’t be an easy target, because that’s what you are, a target, and if you’re too close, if you run into the shooter in the hallway, your school librarian in a lime green vest and an airhorn as a gun, you fight back, not against the librarian of course, only the real shooter, and you’d be prepared since you’ve thought about it enough to know you’d hit him over the head with a chair, or gouge his eyes out with pencils, or you’d freeze because that’s what you did that one time when you saw him dressed in all black, a ski-mask shielding his face, and his black shoes echoing as he ran down the hallway, and you froze until you found out it wasn’t a rifle that he unloaded onto everyone, but instead 500 crickets in the teachers’ lounge, and if you froze in the most realistic drill, how are you expected to perform in the real deal, when your life is truly in danger, because you’re older now, and you’re not invincible, and your childhood imagination couldn’t save you from the bullets, the gun, and the pure hatred from the man holding it, and it’s only the 266th day of the year and there’s already been 53 school shootings.