hi i'm sophie, i'm 14, and i love writing. i really love poetry. i've been published several times in school and camp literary magazines, and i won an essay contest at school against seniors and juniors. i would really love to be part of this magazine!
Existing is for everyone. Existing is as staple; everyone alive exists. Existing is like the stem on a rose; sturdy, strong, always there. Living is not. Living is the delicate rose petal than slowly flits to the ground at the slightest touch. But, like the rose, living is the most beautiful. Living is taking a moment in time and putting a golden picture frame on it in your mind. Living is creating mountains of art, science, math, whatever you love, because living is loving. Living is loving and hating and crying and clenching and unclenching your fists, living is wanting and wishing and hoping. Most importantly, living is doing something with your life. It is not sitting on your mother’s couch at the age of thirty, watching day time television and eating sticky potato ships out of the bag; that’s existing and just barely. If I had to define existing, I would merely say “the act of breathing in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide to keep your brain from shutting down.” But in the dictionary written on the tips of my fingers, living is “cutting up and gluing together different fragments of this shattered world to make them spell out your deepest thoughts and most dire desires.” Living is stopping to smell the roses, existing is never even noticing them.











