ODYSSEY 2008

The Mini Horse

On July 6 th, 1994, the greatest gift ever was sent to me. I was five years old, and the switch to my imagination was on. I loved dolls, Barbies, and the typical imagination games like house and school. Our “Big” house sits in the middle of Suburban Drive, near Helena, but closer to Amhart. I loved our home, but what I really loved about it was the mini house, crunched in the backyard with a little deck and a little patch of grass where I could plant my very own garden and “mow” my very own lawn. It was my dream house.

Summertime was my favorite season. Not only was my birthday in July, but that summer I received the best birthday present ever. I started out having a small birthday celebration with my family and neighborhood friends. Everyone played pin the tail on the donkey, took a giant swing at the piñata, and ate lots of birthday cake. When it was time for presents I couldn’t hold my excitement. I love getting new toys, especially when you’re five. Everyone gave me great gifts, but when it was time to get my present from my mom and dad I was even more ecstatic. They lead me through the back trail, cracked open the wooden fence, and there it stood.

It was tall and thick. The siding was brown with a little white window facing the front. The red deck off the front had a small picnic table where I fantasized eating my snacks. Inside was a tiny cupboard with little teacups and saucers. The aluminum stove and fridge matched the table inside. Gently placed on the table was a beautiful bouquet of daisies. Of course there was a high chair for my baby; she had to be a part of my new adventures.

Everyday for the rest of that summer I spent each waking moment in the mini house. Even if it rained, I would sit inside and color or talk to myself. I loved that my mini house had a cozy roof over my head.

Mom would bring me my lunch; sometimes she would even join me for tea! At nighttime I would roast marshmallows over my plastic fire. I loved it when the neighborhood kids would come and sit with me. Mom later told me that she enjoyed sitting at the kitchen table listening to me talk to absolutely no one.

Wintertime was always a sad time for me. We would pack up the mini house and get it ready for a cold Wisconsin winter. I hated that I had to say goodbye. Dad would always wait until the last warm day in November to close up the mini house. He knew it made me sad, but it was far too cold to stay and play. That always gave me something to look forward to.

I can remember the year as clear as the blue sky. July, of course, but this time it was 2004. Dad was ready for a pool, and so was mom. I, of course, was a freshman and my brother would be starting middle school that fall. So by then we both were too old to still play dolls and superheroes in the mini house. I still would eat my lunch on the tiny porch, even though my legs would be cramped and my head almost always bumped the ceiling. I didn’t care. I wanted to hold onto every memory I had ever created in that house.

Dad warned me that it was time to demolish the mini house the winter before it came to an end. I didn’t believe him; he built that house with his own bare hands, and mom painted every single square foot. They wouldn’t just tear the place down. Would they? Then it hit me. I was too old to play house, and Eric had lost all interest in playing superheroes; it was using up the space where we would soon dig a pool. Of course a pool would be a lot of fun, but I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Dad knew it would upset me, so they tore down the mini house the weekend I was visiting my grandparents up north. When I pulled up the driveway from what I thought was a great weekend, Iwas disturbed by the amount of trash at our curbside. The tiny white window, the red porch, and the picnic table where I once ate my lunch were crumpled to pieces. I jumped from the car and stood there, with the tears swelling my eyes like little bee stings, I cried and cried. My mini house was really gone.

I love our swimming pool, and I have had some great times swimming with friends, but it will never compare to my mini house. I loved that house with all my heart; I would always dream of watching my kids play in it someday. I thought I would transfer it with me to college, and to my new home as an adult. I never thought my parents would take it away from me. They told me to always hold onto the memories that were built beneath the little window sill. It had its time and it was roughly out of shape. Chipped paint, weathered siding, and the nails were always catching my tiny toes. I guess it was for the best.

Today when I help cut the grass, I always take extra time to mow that little patch which I once called my yard, and my little garden that looked just like mom’s.
Emily Franken (12)

Teenage Government

Hey listen up a bit,
Let’s talk about teen government.
Cliques at school are genocide
Standing up is suicide.

Don’t give us all your sympathies
gave up on all your remedies
Just hear what we have to say.

Lunchroom is a warring zone
Rude stares are there to set the tone.
Your mouth keeps shut, you look away
Hope that there’s no war today.

Do you want to hold our hands?
Shield us, make reality seem wrong.
If not in this land,
Where can we get along?

Don’t give us all your sympathies
gave up on all your remedies
Just hear what we have to say.
Jaime Willems (10)

Let us Take a Moment to Ponder

this sheet of paper is better
than every human that has polluted this earth
with his or her existence
why you ask
this sheet was created to write a message
it fulfills its purpose one hundred percent
I have never seen it do something else
that does not relate to keeping words
it has never disappointed me
and what man or woman can say that
what king or idol or loser can claim perfection
who can smile in their insides with the feeling of fulfillment
I know I can’t
made too many mistakes
taken too many roads
failed too many tests
if only I could be a white sheet of paper
with a pretty poem about depression
sweet irony
make me blank
Horatio (10)

A Cage

Since then she was caged,
Trapped within borders made for her,
Within borders made for her,
Within boundaries set for her,
And though space was small,
She was safe,
For she knew all her boundaries were defined,
Her borders were clearly seen.
She never had to question,
For all was black or white.

But then, too big she grew, too small the cage,
So she was forced to enter the world,
To the beautiful and ominous,
To the friendly and deadly,
Where friends are foes,
And days are nights.
There’s black and white and shades of grey,
It’s hard when so long you’ve been caged.
IaOng Moua (10)

The Dark

The young man stared ahead, squinting his eyes, trying to discern what had made the sound. With a deafening gulp, he swallowed the saliva in his mouth and stepped forward. A twig cracked under his foot after his first step, and he silently cursed himself. Blinking heavily to clear the salty sweat from his burning eyes, he regained his composure and stepped forward again. One step at a time, he slowly moved through the thick copse of trees, drawing small lines of blood on his arms and face as the thorny branches lashed at his exposed skin. He allowed himself a sigh as he stepped out from the copse, feeling the crisp night air tingle at his open wounds. Gripping the baseball bat in his right hand tightly, he stepped forward towards what appeared to be a house. The dark night made it impossible to make out anything definite, but he thought he saw a shimmer from within one of the voids on the side of the house, a makeshift window.

He couldn’t even feel his knuckles as he moved forward, the blood in his fingers completely cut off due to his iron grip. With another impossibly noisy gulf, he stepped into the large, carved out section of the wall, what must have been the door.

The darkness enveloped him.
Devon Marchese(12)

Solo Flight

I stared at the sky, awestruck.
The clouds that formed the dome over our world tore,
And the light of twilight spilled like rain
Through the jagged mist of glass
That lay broken across the sky.

These specks of light drizzle across my eyelids;
Soaking into my skin, I seem to sprout wings,
And I begin to rise to the sky.

Stuck somewhere between the Earth and the Heavens
I rest; the grass below me seems young, grounded by its roots,
And the trees become arms of the Earth,
Extending to drag me back down to the surface

And yet still, I rise higher,
Now caught between the worlds of sunset and nightfall.
I watch as the sun throws out its last tendrils of day
And begins to sink into the vast ocean of the night

The darkness grows as the sun is engulfed by the tide of night
And is torn to shreds by the riptide,
Scattering its broken pieces to become sands of the ocean
And stars of the night sky

Where is there left to go?
As I look back at that small familiar turquoise planet,
I realize that it is nothing more than a drop of rain
That had fallen from the lofty skies of the universe.

Why could I not find the clouds from which this raindrop came…?
Justin Douglas(11)

Eavesdropping on The Symphony

Screen door slams and a humid, muggy night instantly oppresses me
Grass slips under my bare feet
I stop mid-yard and climb clumsily into the tree house
My dad and I built when I was eleven
Simple, it has withheld the test of time
No walls, just three small platforms
And engulfing it from all sides, the massive maple
The closest thing to nature in suburbia
I struggle in the cramped space, pulling my knees to my chest
When did I become so agonizingly unfit for sitting in tree houses?
I look up
Leaves dangle immobile, hung out to dry at the ends of tapering branches
I can see the patch where the sun hits during the day,
Chlorophyll already paling
I look out beyond fences and tops of houses
Too early to catch the moon but late enough for streetlights to sputter on
A mosquito makes its tired rounds about my head
The lights from my dad’s car cut briefly across the yard
Before disappearing into the garage
I give no indication of my presence
I listen to the layers of sound overlapping
A few geese overhead, spurred by the heat
Crickets shuffling, yawning
A wailing train, lonely I think
The bass from a car creating a Doppler effect
An unidentified bug screaming repeatedly
My neighbors’ quarreling drunkenly
And underneath everything the distant but constant whir of the highway
I press my back deeper into the tree
Hoping no one will notice me in my red plaid shirt
Grace Grocholski (11)