By Leighton Tanaka, TIWP Student “Do you plan to keep me here? To simply lock me up and be done with me? To forget you ever existed, you think I forgive so easily?” Indie spat at the person standing at the front of the cell. She could hear their hands shaking as the keys they […]

By Emma Stokes, TIWP Student When you were here we danced in those old fields. The sign would always say do not enter and at first, I didn’t want to. Then you look at me and asked if I trusted you and I did. So we spent hours dancing, laughing, and rolling in those fields […]

By Leighton Tanaka, TIWP Student I opened the door. Mom and dad always warned us about it. They said that outside there was nothing but a wasteland. They said that the outside was burning. Mom and dad are liars. The plants somehow grow without sunlight, the flags sink under the weight of the air, the […]

By Leighton Tanaka, TIWP Student Dear Jodie, You do not know me, nor do I know you. Well, not really. But he always talked about you.The first time I talked to him he changed my life. When a strange old man moved into the apartment next door I’d never dreamed I’d talk to him. He […]

By Leighton Tanaka, TIWP Student The end of a civilization among the many galaxies. We stand at the tail end of infinity. When the stars are but a memory, and the sky is nothing but a void of absence. I could not describe its color, for it was not black, but gone. Simply missing were […]

By Leighton Tanaka, TIWP Student I am a home. I have housed thousands of people. Within these walls that have been torn down and rebuilt time and time again. Walls that have been repainted a thousand different hues and touched by a thousand different hands. I have witnessed many families come and go, I have […]

By Leighton Tanaka, TIWP Student She sat outside on the cold asphalt, hugging her knees. She cried, and I cried too. I wondered how humans, born to be kind but deteriorating as they developed, were able to do this. Great rains fell from above, the world grieved the colossal loss of a thousand different lives. […]

By Leighton Tanaka, TIWP Student The smell of dinner awaiting Nico half finished tempted her. But she restrained herself under the accusing gaze of her sister, Winter. She scowled but obeyed, knowing full well what it meant to start early. The table sat empty but set, waiting for the overflowing portions of her mothers food. […]

By Maya Petzoldt, TIWP student “Hey- HEY!” You hear something- like repetitive snapping, and slowly crack open your eyes. As you blink the first thing you focus on is what is far above you. It’s dark, and reddish, like black rust. But then you focus on what is much closer, the tan hand snapping their […]

By Riley Faust, TIWP Student The Whispering Woods were strangely quiet. Soft, dewy grass blanketed the forest floor and silenced my footsteps. Rays of sunlight passed through the rough branches of trees, raining down light. It wasn’t warm, but rather a comfortable cold, a temperature that felt fitting among the dark, velvety bark of the […]