Taxes are simple / Ma stops yelling at me / Forgiveness is learned the way a hand wraps weight of a cast-iron skillet / How oil leaps at skin / The sting so brief you keep cooking / Mornings widen like mouths mid-laughter / Stepping barefoot onto what should not hold you / But does: Steam / Washi paper / Popcorn ceiling raining down stars / Even lint from polka-dotted socks looks holy on a floor still ringing yesterday’s warmth / No debt / I can parallel park / That I am remembered even when streetlights bloom like bruises / We drink darkness slow like champagne / Body heat tipsy on badly-kept secrets / The night a polaroid dwindling at the corners / Stomaching pasts without retching on shadows / I can flip pancakes / Golden first-try / Butter stays soft / Porch light stays on / The body can outgrow its own husk & still be called mine / We dance in freefall / Tumble-drying in the wind / No nuclear war / Yes nuclear family / That one day, I will rinse jasmine rice / Wrist-deep in muffled water / Granules loosening on their own / Enough to fill up a bowl / And every hungry thing.
Vanessa Chen
Grade: 12 / CEGEP I
Crofton House School
Vancouver, BC
“I wrote this poem while hovering on the brink of adulthood: close enough to see its responsibilities clearly, but not yet ready to surrender the tenderness of youth. I wrote it as a catalogue of hopes both mundane and cosmic, where learning to pay taxes or flip pancakes sits beside survival and love. Writing it helped me make peace with uncertainty: that growing up doesn’t mean knowing everything, but trusting that not knowing is part of becoming.”