Teen Poets Recognized by Award Named for Providence Public Educator Maureen Kenner

altitude sickness 
By Lina Durfee

at 12,000 feet 
body forgets what it 
promised mouth i was seven 
watching sentences end before they began 
architecture collapsing in real time no one notices 
avalanche crumbs wait your turn teacher said meaning 
learn to be late to places you've already been the art is compression tongue pressing answers flat until becoming part of body instead of body lodging somewhere beneath sternum a weight with no name except three heartbeats between knowing three breaths between light holy ratio of making yourself small enough to enter rooms that weren't built for your particular shape of freezing how did you— as if elevation were choice as if some lungs weren't made to labor at sea level to crave the thin the stripped the barely breathable 

you make me feel— 
sentence hanging mist at treeline where 
things stop growing upward start growing smaller 
wind-stripped apologetic blooming (surrender) i watch 
arrive where i've been standing cold-burnt relearning what to 
call this endurance, blue-lipped “being ahead” calling it community 
mother says: your people meaning those who also ration who recognize each other by what crystallizes in the space between what we know what we're allowed glass ceiling has a view because it exists where air forgets how to hold i see them— generations making themselves aerodynamic shedding everything that might catch be too much for atmospheres not built for us we become alpine wind-stripped beautiful in our adaptations to climates that demand we thrive by becoming less 

some nights 
head splits along fault lines 
vision whites at the edges the way 
it does when breathing wrong too long 
forgetting that gasping is not the same as….. 
i could descend—translate summit into valley 
what i see into something safe for their vertigo but then the view… 
and i've been breathing this air too long to remember easy too long to go 
back to elevations where everyone breathes without thinking where knowing doesn't feel like drowning and brilliance isn't something you survive alone at 12,000 feet they say if the air feels wrong “must descend” no one mentions what to do when down feels burial-like when your lungs were always built for heights that make others dizzy

Something to hold
By Beatrice Spondike

The kettle screams as it remembers something, We said we’d never say again, 
You pour black tea into two clay cups, 
But only fill one to the brim. 

There is a red stain blooming on the counter, Strawberry jam or wine, or something I won't ask. You’d wipe it away, and it stains your sleeve. A reminder, 
                 If you're gentle it may fade away down into my bones. 

Outside sparrows argue in the gutter, 
Small bodies fight for absolution or maybe air, You could name their kind like constellations, Now you just pretend they aren't there.  

And I think about murmurations: 
How starlings move as a single mind, 
A shifting shape that I wish would give me answers, About things that cannot be defined. 

We were once the same, 
A quiet, flickering design. 

You say nothing, I say less, 
Watch steam undo itself before our eyes. 
There's a version of you in every room, 
I don't know how to help. 

The color red keeps showing up: 
In the sink, on your nails, between my teeth, In every word I’ve almost said, 
Selfish or selfless, I won't decide. 

I want to ask you what you’ve lost, 
Why the miles stay resoundingly still.  
Grief sits heavy in my throat, 
Like something I might spill. 

So drink black tea going cold,
Let silence do its part. 
Two sparrows on one wire, 
Too thin to hold, 
Or a mother's daughter with a heavy heart.