Referencing "Simile" By N. Scott Momaday What did we say to each other That now we are as the mermaids— Who swim gleefully With joy in the water, With voices loud, With tails swaying, With water surrounding them? We punch about the sea, facing the reality of the land.

You were never just a person to me; you were something sweeter, something I didn’t have words for yet. So I called you cake. Not because you were soft, or warm, or made everything better; but because you felt like celebration even on ordinary days. Now everything tastes like absence, and I don’t know what to call you except that. The sweetest thing I ever loved.

The sides of my thin tent glow faintly orange from the lantern in the center. The small rustle the sleeping bag emits fill my ears, the silence, gone just as fast. I feel the warmth from my cocoon of quilts abruptly disappear as my face sticks out into the cold air within my tent. Although it's much colder outside, this small tent is a sanctuary in a desert of snow. A bubble of isolation and comparative warmth for me. My nose and cheeks start to go numb and pink as I attempt

The grass scratches her legs as she runs through it, chasing her dogs until her feet feel like they’ll give out with another step. She flops onto the grass, lying down and trying to find pictures in the clouds, one hand on a dog, the other clutching a Barbie play phone. She wants so badly to be like her older sister. Her sister doesn’t play with the dogs much. She sees them as dirty, Annoying and unruly. She mostly stays inside on her real phone. The girl doesn’t care. She

Inspired by “Simile” by N. Scott Momaday What did we say to each other That now we are as the birds— Who communicate through songs, Who soar through the sky; With beaked jaws and soft feathers, Portraying a symbol of freedom and joy That glides across the wind.