least favorite season
By Sophia Luo
an ode to winter, but not exactly a commentary on the coldest season.
frigid cold
warms my face,
a biting wind
caresses my cheeks.
winter hardens
and continues
and so do I.
I’ve always been meaner
in the colder months.
the weather and I
reflect each other.
an aura of intimacy—
all of us gathered together
bundled with warmth,
yet not intimate at all.
the winds are
careless, callous
constantly blowing.
windows closed,
doors shut—
winter questions why
everyone has abandoned
him.
those who remain outside
he tickles,
saying, “Come play
come dance in the cold.”
they shiver and cuddle,
complaining,
“It’s so cold out today
I wish I was inside.”
winter settles for indifference
for ice and wind and snow
indifference is the opposite
of love
and yet,
winter is content to be alone.
Girls Write Now On the Other Side of Everything: The 2023 Anthology
Do you know what it’s like to communicate with your family across a salty ocean’s divide? Do you want the sun and moon to enter your home with stories written in embers? Do you seek voices that will punctuate the darkness? Welcome to the other side of everything. It’s the other side of silence, the other side of childhood, the other side of hate, the other side of indifference, it’s the other side of sides, where the binary breaks down. It’s a new paradigm, a destination, a different perspective, a mindset, a state of openness, the space between the endless folds in your forehead, hopes for tomorrow, and reflections on the past. This anthology of diverse voices is an everything bagel of literary genres and love songs, secrets whispered in the dark of night, conversations held with ancestors under the sea.
Process
For this piece, my mentor and I were in our pair session and she gave me a prompt to write about winter. It was a rather chilly day and I had just gotten home from a long day of school. Annoyed from the biting cold, I took it upon myself to imagine winter, the season, personified, and how he (I assigned him a pronoun) feels when it is winter. For this specific poem, I tried to choose each of my words carefully and ensure that each one had a specific place within the poem. I edited out unnecessary words and changed ones that didn’t match the somewhat humourous, desolate tone that I tried to convey.
Sophia Luo
Sophia Luo is a sophomore in high school in New York City. She loves to write poetry and short stories and is looking to explore different genres of writing. She loves to read and her favorite book changes constantly, but at the moment it is The Hate U Give.
