2026 Youth Poetry Writing Contest: Teen
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Teen Winner: “Gravity is Easier” by Harshika Gidwani (age 14)
I cup my life in my hands,
then set it down to reach my phone,
Because it’s easier to stay grounded
and feel impossibly alone;
Had Icarus been given another chance to soar,
the sky might be still his to claim,
But even with the gift of flight,
would we choose more than what’s safe
and tame?
Distracted by blue-lit screens and
passing jokes,
we forget about our pens,
forget that whole worlds live within us
as we tap right past them again;
I don’t want to scroll my life away,
Watching hours blur and decline,
I don’t want my potential wasted,
but where, exactly, do I draw the line?
I want to soar like Icarus once did,
even knowing how it ends,
Because I would accept the falling,
just to prove I rose at all in the end.
Teen Honorable Mention: “To Not Care Is to Not See” by Nadia Murray (age 17)
No one cares
About the tragedy of life
About the blade of the knife
About the lonely wife
About the thief in the night
About the attempt to fight
About the absence of light
About the words that bite
About what’s done in spite
About most anything, and that’s quite...
Sad if you ask me
Because to not care is to not see
And to not see is to not be
And to not be is to not be free
And perhaps it’s because we’re filled with greed
With greed so heavy as to not bleed
We don’t want to bleed because then we cannot lead
And the inability to lead wears at us and tears at us
And eventually results in nothing more than crushed dreams
Everyone cares
About getting the high
About getting the guy
About how not to cry
About spewing a lie
Simply for the plot
For shooting your shot
For looking hot
For being the first thought
In someone else’s mind, when for you, they are not
And then we find ourselves thinking
And in our thinking, suddenly we’re sinking
In the thoughts we can’t control
And then we think and we sink and we can’t think
And now: we drink!
Because we’ve been brought to the brink
And met our limit
Of the light that shines - we must dim it
Because to keep it shining is simply too hard
And too vulnerable for humans, so we put up guard
And we guard our hearts to keep from getting scarred
Because other people have no regard
For any of our feelings, and then we end up sad
And being sad isn’t fun
And feeling bad has just begun
And now I’m clad in what I’ve done
And I wish I hadn’t just run
Cause I was glad, but now there’s just one
Thought in my mind
How I wish the world was kind
And I wish I could find
Someone who hasn’t gone blind
Someone with a half-decent mind
Who’s not three steps behind
But shockingly, there’s no one in all of mankind
Because no one cares
About what is right
About what is bright
About how instead of fight I choose flight
About how I’ve always been a coward, hiding in plain sight
About how, try as I might,
I still can’t get you to care about what I write
