Seniors in Creative Writing participated in a slam poetry competition on Tuesday afternoon. The top poets from each section performed on stage in front of their classmates, then received scores from five student judges. Topics ranged from depression to divorce, from parents to the color purple.

After twenty-five powerful performances, three students emerged with the top scores: Reilly Branson (“What I Learned at School”), Josh Svehla (“Monsters”), and Lizzie Van Doorn (“Three Little Letters”).

Here are the winning poems:

Three Little Letters by Lizzie Van Doorn
When I was twelve years old I counted down the days
starting early January, hoping to maybe make it to May.
When I was twelve years old I went to my middle school
Then came home to a hospital
and I transformed from child to adult
so that I could be strong and smile in the darkness of what most call
7th grade

When I was twelve years old I brushed my mother’s hair
and I read her books
The spoons with which she used to feed me I held up to her mouth
All the while all I could do is wait as I watched her weight
decrease

A new year’s eve spent with doctors and nurses
Where they told my dad things that forced him to think “how much are hearses”
How do you tell a twelve year old where her mother is going
How do you say the words
“Maybe three more months”
How do you tell a twelve year old that you were wrong
How do you bear the fact that 3 months turned into 3
weeks
How do you stay strong when you desperately need to be
weak.

That February
My life became defined by three little letters
Three little letters that punch my gut every time they are placed in sequence
because A and L and S are no longer a grade and my initial and the hiss of a snake
but rather that snake biting my heart and injecting its venom
and they’re a disease and they’re a murderer and
They took my strength and I’m angry

I’m angry because I am seventeen years old and it’s been 5 years
and after 5 years so many more have been shedding tears
and after 5 years we have advanced no further
I’m angry because those three letters are winning
and the awareness maybe increasing
but the research is at a standstill we can’t push our way to the top of the anthill

I’m angry because people still don’t know
Lou Gehrig wasn’t the only one to go
and I’m angry because its importance is put to the side
due to the smaller numbers of those who have died
and if only I could scream “but what about me?”
because my mom was one of the 5000 diagnosed that year
and there is no hope with that diagnosis
and that twelve year old girl who was brought to her knees
would do anything to have her mom at her wedding one day
or do her laundry or just give her one last hug.

I’m angry because this non visible defect
drained the life out of a strong healthy woman and is currently draining the life of another
and all the while those three little letters slip by unnoticed
and a terminal disease destroys a family leaving in its wake what can only be described as
apocalyptic.

So I can only hope and I can only pray that ALS can soon mean
Another Life Saved
And that one day a doctor can say “oh not to worry just a case of ALS, we will fix you right up”
and even though my family may not be that lucky I want another one to be
because no one should feel the helplessness and
because no one should lose to letters anymore and
because although you may think that A and L and S are important letters I can promise you that the world can do without them.

Monsters by Josh Svehla
There are monsters inside me
crawling around in my skin
smiling their sick little grins
making my head throb throb throb

My mind is a thread,
but it’s a thin thread,
twisting and tangling and turning all about
until I can’t tell one end from the other,
until I can’t take the monsters tickling my senses,
teasing me,
tricking me,
hiding in every shadow.
And even then, they sometimes make their grand appearance
and choose to come right up to my grimace
where they can mock the boy who wishes he were a man
but knows he can’t be until he can sleep without the covers over his head.

Everyone has a fear.
Everyone gets a little paranoid.
But no mom, I’m not just being overly cautious,
No doc, I’m not just doing this for attention,
No kid, my “imaginary friends” aren’t my friends anymore,
they stopped being my friends when they stopped being imaginary
They stopped comforting me when they stopped coming and going
Because it’s rare when the going comes.
It’s all just staying nowadays.
Staying in the shadows, staying around that corner
outside that window
in the cupboard
in the shower
every hour
every minute
every second
of my life is consumed
in the reality that I can barely tell reality from the fiction anymore.

They tell us to take medication,
but popping pills is poisoning our bodies,
pounding us with impurity.
Medication is having knee pain,
and then hammering on that knee
so that when I stop, I feel “better.”
Until they see, they don’t understand,
but they don’t see,
nobody sees what I see
and seeing is believing but even if I don’t believe in what I see,
I see it,
and I can say I see it but you don’t see it so you don’t believe it.
So how exactly do I explain the color red to a blind man?
Well, ya see… ya don’t.

But I can’t help it.
So don’t tell me I don’t see it
and don’t tell me to suck it up
because you cannot possibly comprehend
having to learn that seeing is not believing.
If I believed what I saw, my mind would have run off like a chicken without a head.
They say that seeing isn’t believing,
they say that about good ol Santa,
but then we find out that seeing is believing
and that we don’t see him because he’s as real as 0% unemployment.
If you understood,
If you were in my position,
then you could finally see that you can see but not believe.

I’ve learned how to cope.
Coping is wrestling down the demons
But being left gasping for air.
Coping is wanting to pet a puppy
but just being left with a scare.
Coping is knowing that even though the walls are screaming at you,
they aren’t screaming at everyone else.

I can’t help my fear,
but you can help me
and you can help everyone out there who is wrestling their own demons,
fighting a battle nobody can see.
You can’t see the battle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help fight in it.
Be the backup, be the support.
Be the reason someone who falls gets back to the fort.
Just because the battle takes place in someone’s head
doesn’t mean that they should be fighting it alone.

What I Learned At School by Reilly Branson
I came home from school
Hair happily tangled, like a spider’s first
Web with a hundred messy angles,
As it usually was,
Shoelaces untied
To provide a trailing tail, so that I could remember how I got to the place I was,
As they usually were
Eyes an overworked hoover dam-
Holding back tears and turning my watery fears into the oil fueling my frustration-
Eyes tired and tearful,
As they usually were.

I was just about to escape upstairs to my bedroom belltower of notre dame when
My presence was noted by my mom and she asked
“What’d you learn at school today?”

I ponder for a moment
All of the moments
That crafted the tick tick tick tick ticking countdown of my time at school and realize
I’ve been taught so much just
Not what my teachers were trying to drill
Trying to fill
My head so empty that it rose to be with the clouds.

At school, I learned that packets
Are more valuable than the menial racket
Of a meaningful conversation
And that what came of my evaluation
Was a ticket to the rusty, run-down third track it
Was the one furthest from the station
Where there were no trains
No training
For the technicolor world I wanted willingly to throw myself into
Instead, we were a gang in chains
In pain
Ingrained with the valuable information like
Y=MX+B
While all I ever wanted to know was
why I couldn’t just be me
And later
Why you couldn’t just leave me be
When you’re a kid
The world in which you live is supposed to be free of troubles
Blowing bubbles,
Not filling them in.

And you tell me just to be patient
But I already am one
I thought of all the time I spent performing illness for the nurse
So that I could leave school early
All the while not knowing I really was sick

At school, I learned that I had depression and
At school, I learned that that was status quo
I remember crying
In the morning’s because I didn’t want to go
To that grey cube
Frosted and forgotten
where it felt like every step took was through the dirty snow
And where everyone around me felt the same level of rotten
Maybe it was because we are so prone to be caught in
The mesh of drama stitched up with cotton
To soften the trauma that we all have
But don’t want to admit
But it’s there

And in here
We hear
Not nearly
Enough ILY
Just GPA
And it makes me wanna DIE
And that’s not OK
We long to be set free
From the forced gulping down of TEA
With no sugar or cream
And I used to think that to ACT
Was to stand on a stage and do something fun
But when I hear that acronym it makes me wanna run away
Always away
But rarely alone

At school, I learned that I’m not alone.
Though anxiety has cut through us like razors through our foggy backyards in summertime
Though things don’t seem to be getting any less hard
Though whether or not we let is show,
We know we’ve all been scarred
And school is not bandaid but
Nonetheless we’ll heal
Just keep holding tight to that wheel
And I pray to whoever’s listening that one day
We’ll feel that we have something real
And everything will be okay
I came home and my mom asked me
“What’d you learn at school today?”