by Grace Pappadellis ’29 on March 19, 2026

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Portfolio - Poetry

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The flowers that sit on my desk,
die when I go home. 
They were once effervescent, lurid, plump. 
The water is absorbed and the contents grow shriveled. 

Their beauty will forever be stored in the softness of my insides. 
I tear up when I see the bouquets, swiftly carried through the swinging doors,
I squint in the sunlight, it is hurtful but is wondrous, 
it’ll melt the snow, and the winter will die, all the same. 

Where are the flowers so effortlessly being carried to? 
I wish to inhale, let their sweetness, their clarity, infiltrate me, assuage my bitterness. 
I want them in my room, at my bedside, the first sign of life as I wake. 
The flowers I once had were only temporary, unlike the statues they leave behind, vestiges of color and lucidity. 

My tears are like petals, I wish they radiated the same. 
There’s courage in being a flower, you exist without knowledge of what you leave behind, but you embolden my belief in seeking a similar blush, 
a parallel passion I felt when I once received you. 

by Clara Johnson ’26 on March 19, 2026

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Portfolio - Poetry

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Staggering wildly to the corner
The two girls giggling in the dark
Yesterday on the run from the party
Small hands pressed into my own
The room is caught in the summer’s warmth
In the linoleum walls of the church basement
With folding chairs
We dance in Sunday shoes the whole night long
To upbeat songs and the light’s buzz leaves
Us cast in gold
Echoes of yesterday haunting
Empty chairs
Staggering drunkenly in the corner
I shiver with cold and tears collect
My skin goes pink from the drink, imitating
The youthful flush of yesterday
The tile is stained by the leaking roof
On the linoleum walls of bar bathrooms
The fan is rustling the stagnant air
10 years gone, I’m lonely
Echoes of yesterday haunting
On the concrete the wheeled bag rumbles
The red truck idles on the curb
Standing there with her arms wide open,
My smile cleaves old familiar lines
The juice of peaches, the ivy fence and the tangling roots
Of the old oak tree
The giggling girls with their golden curls in the basement
Of an old white church
Echoes of yesterday haunting
Empty chairs
Echoes of yesterday haunting
Echoes of yesterday haunting

by Benedict Bergeron ’29 on February 12, 2026

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Portfolio - Poetry

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My love for thee is all the stars at night,
Reflected, shining in your eyes’ pure glass.
In the dark, swirling cup I sip with delight,
There you are, but you do so much surpass,
You, like a princess over every knight.
But am I worthy to love thee so much?
No. But I love you as pauper loves might
And knows that might’s beyond his reaching touch.
My love begins with grief for your sadness
When your beauty and grace live on in such
Sorrow when they ought to live in gladness,
To be beyond this weary world’s cold clutch.
When a book is found that once was lost in th’ madness
Of busy days, I swell with glee and press
To me that tome and let the day’s badness
Be washed away in every paper tress.
My love beholds an Artist in your face
And if you weep I would hope to caress
Below your eyes and clear away that place
That your laughing beauty might be no less.
But if weeping comes and the good times erase,
I’d weep with you til the day’s most bitter end.
As the red sun sets and the light wanes apace,
I will stay with you, my heart’s dearest friend.

by Clara Johnson ’26 on February 12, 2026

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Portfolio - Poetry

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In twisted, creaking wood I found our names
Were scrawled by mother’s hand on the door frame.

My brother’s name is scratched below my own
Though he’s become much taller as he’s grown.

And so I see her there. She’s only haze,
A momentary blip into my gaze.

She’s like the dust within striated rays,
Like flecks that dance in beams of sunny days.

The fleeting woman scrawls my name anew
At 4-foot-5, though now I’m 5-foot-2.

She gently smooths my hair and on my brow
Presses a kiss I’ve learned to live without.

The apparition moves across the room
With warmth I knew, forgotten warmth of womb.

Forever 4-foot-5 in mama’s eyes,
And never will she see us grow more wise.

And never will she see us grow more tall
And never will she see us grow at all.

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.

by Grace Pappadellis ’29 on October 9, 2025

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Portfolio

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Your expression,
your countenance,
I can read you.
You’re a book, but let’s watch a film.

Hushed, even, tranquil.
Repetitive fluttering,
the television lightens your face.
Beaming, blinking, a quiet smile, indifferent.

We’ll never speak enough,
and we live in the bleakness,
somehow comforted by shared sorrows.
Your intrigue—

Nothing and everything.
You follow the broadcasted voices,
but I wish you’d follow mine.
Lounge clothes, or a random combination—

I admire your aloofness.
I’d like to be the same,
unfixed and wandering.
Stuck here, forever, it seems.

I’m grateful for your effortless answers,
though they’ll never settle.
Temporary relief, futile band-aids.
Fix me, fix me, just by staying.