By Lina Norris-Raman, TIWP Student

Love
Elivens.
Something stirs in me,
The way your words
Brush my cheek
And wrap me in a heavy blanket that tugs away
my self-doubt.
These remarks
tell me I am living,
That I deserve something,
For the simple fact that I exist.
They remind me that the world
Doesn’t view me
Through my own cracked mirror—
That maybe the world
Could be more truthful than I.
Love is the way I look at my
sister’s sleeping face
and fill with a quiet weight of tranquility,
knowing she is here,
still and untroubled,
soft under the glow of moonlight.
Love, my tears falling on my best friend’s shoulders in her car on the way home from the beach,
as we blur past the coast and blast “Ribs” through the speakers
on the very last day of 8th grade.
We know the road forks ahead,
but love is knowing we have miles left to go.

Hope
Awakens me.
Hope for my future,
for our future.
And I’ve never been religious,
can’t force myself to worship a god
Who could allow 
The suffering I witness 
Every passing day
so though it’s silly, and likely meaningless
I’ll never pass a glowing clock at 11:11
without a wish,
Without a quiet prayer
for the world,
and selfishly, for my own life.
I pray to be a pillar
that may be leaned on without falter,
someone who’s weathered her struggles
and can pull you through your own.
As I stand in the incandescent light of the hall clock 
I am alive. 
And rain, with its rhythmic pitter-patter
and its sudden, glassy shine—
and how, just like me,
It becomes almost beautiful
When the sun at last makes an appearance
Makes me feel alive. 

Music
My own playlist,
the way I am carried away
by rhythms I know by heart,
rhythms I feel intrinsically.
Lip-syncing lyrics
that ache deeply
in my chest.
Sound—
with every clack of a keyboard,
a bird’s expected chirp,
water pouring into a glass.
Every sound,
if you listen long enough,
floods the heart with a knowing:
You are alive.
You’re here.
And you are human.