Monday, 16 September 1816
Sarah ran her fingers through her matted blonde hair and pulled on the rusty metal lever with both blistered hands. The lever and dozens of others connected to a grotesque assortment of gears, ratchets and rollers that spanned the factory floor. The power loom was a quicker way, so she was told, to manufacture large amounts of fabric at once. All the same, Sarah wished that it had never been invented.
Had the machine not taken...

We file into the benches in the grove next to the cabin. It is twilight, the sky streaked with pink and orange and purple. A campfire has been built in the pit next to the lake, and counselors are standing around it, some holding guitars. I grin at Emma, who has taken a seat next to her girlfriend Jessie. The counselors hand out songbooks and we take out flashlights. The pine trees are silhouetted against the sky and the lake,...

It was the middle of June, and the sweltering heat of summer was beginning to settle into the town. As time crept slowly but steadily towards the solstice, the days lengthened and the anticipation for the end of the school year grew. It was time for the first applications of sunscreen, the opening of the local pools, the signing of yearbooks, and the planning for hours of seemingly endless free time that would be looked back upon in wonder: where...

Yesterday I was assigned a video to watch regarding college applications, and there were a whole bunch of people talking about how their parents wanted them to have good jobs, but they wanted to be artists, writers, musicians. Some of them went into real estate or something instead, wasted ten years of their lives on something they didn't enjoy. Others worked odd jobs and volunteered doing what they loved until they were able to become what they wanted to be....

Sweet Spring is in the air, and with her scents 
The sunlight beams its smile down from the sky. 
We leave the trail and find a broken fence,
Its bars, like fallen trees, in grasses lie. 

But look! A gap within the fence is found,
And past it, swaying fields of molten gold
Framed by tall trees, sprung from the fertile ground, 
Which stand as straight and fair as soldiers bold.
 
We walk in awe through thick, untrodden grass ...

Sometimes I look at the world
And I see that it is hideous. 
I see a girl typing offensive messages behind a screen,
Knowing no one will know it was her. 
I see a boy making jokes about a group of people
When his classmate is part of that group.
I see a girl being told that she “asked for it” 
Because her skirt was “too short.” 
I see a boy forbidden from being himself
Because he was born a...

A cool night breeze flows through the screen door and kisses my bare shoulders. My family is sound asleep in their bedrooms, but instead of lying on the sofa that is my makeshift bed, I stand in front of the screen door that separates the kitchen from the deck outside. The door has gotten jammed again, but I jiggle it until it gives way. My feet welcome the surface of the wooden deck as I step from the tile kitchen...