What Wasn't Born

Name and I, we like math jokes and strong smells
but velocity pulls and pushes
and all I've ever seen of her
is the closing and unclosing of the blue boxes
in the back of her knees as she pulls away.
At birth,
while I was busy looking related to
an oversized and melting milk popsicle, she poked
through into my ear*, squeezed out from my frenzied mouth
and ran. I'm still waiting to be introduced.

01110100 011010000 01101001 01110011 00100000 0110100
00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 0110000 011100101
01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100
01101011 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101
01101100 00100000 011000

that was in binary, and was
meant to make you feel alone.

each day the bus has a new name
today: Morning
yesterday: Pavlov
for tomorrow, I've narrowed it down to
SomethingToBeAfraidOf or Skipper

01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001
01110011 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001
01110010 01111001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101001
01110011 00100000 01110100 01101101 01101111 01110011
01110100 00100000 01101010 01100001 01100100 00100000
01110011 01101001 0110100 01100101 01101110

that was in
binary, the most jagged silence.

---

Elowyn Corby, age 17
Category IV (Grades 10-12) 2008 Grand Prize Winner
Santa Cruz, California
Submitted independently