Welcome to elementia, a magazine edited and designed by teenagers in the Kansas City metro area and published by Johnson County Library. elementia takes on a new theme each year; this year’s submissions were inspired by Humanity.

When I’m gone, let my memories scatter like falling leaves, each one a fleeting moment drifting gracefully in the wind. Let laughter echo like the final notes of a song, soft yet filled with warmth that lingers.

legacy left a stain on every shirt i ever borrowed
everything i ever gave came with a smell of loving
of keepsakes and keeping safe

I walk on the remains of my ancestors, down twisted and treacherous paths. I carry the scars of generations slung over one shoulder, pulling me off balance, and on the other I bear the silence of a thousand words unsaid.

I hope you have a sweet summer,
I want you to swim fast, win the race and smile.
And while you wear that medal,
text me that you won and beat your best time.

In the Early Summer,
I drink sticky gold sunshine and nibble velvet pink roses
and breathe the air of Saturday mornings:
Saturday mornings when I wake up to a tangle of sheets
clock hands at 7:30
window draped in sleeves of sun and the brush of a breeze

You would think that versatility would be appreciated. 
Small forks and spoons for dessert, big ones for entrees. 
There’s a knife equipped for steak, butter, and cheese. 
The amount of money, plastic, and materials used for cutlery is astonishing.

A blooming handful of violet flowers,
The beautiful journey of being loved and lost.
A body, fragile and breakable, yet as light and magnificent as a blossomed plant.
Weeping and eroding as time progresses to the end, 

I’m back home for Chinese New Year’s and I want to know what it was like for my great-grandmother when she was little.

It is a nondescript summer day. Hot, but in the way all summer days are, entirely unremarkable on its own. My mother, ever the artist, takes one look at the sprawling canvas of blues and grays and browns before her, so at odds with the outside world, and decides it needs remedying.

Market spices always made me feel ill. The aroma would go straight to the back of my olfactory cortex, pounding the inner walls of my head.

I look up at the clear sky
Scattered with white dots like a polka-dotted tie
The cosmos,
Filled with rocks and trash, space compost.
If each small star is a sun and our sun is so big
If we are so small to our sun, the smallest of stars.
Then what am I in space?

“You’ve grown”

Your lips are painted red like the roses they make rosaries from. Melting the petals down to
clay and shaping something new,
the way God shaped man from earth,
a modicum of faith is crafted.
They drop a subtle shade of red, like plum wine mixed with vodka at a party where drinks

Characterized by lingering sadness and nostalgia following the recent end of a great story or series.

Athazagoraphobia (Fear of being forgotten) 

Worth 
/wəːθ/

Adjective: 

A: equivalent in value to the sum or item specified. 

a bowl of ocean: no bigger than
cupped palms; the same concave
as the deflated iris over
the sightless eye.

long before you cared, the lanterns
became beacons. i find myself
outside, moth-bitten, and
perfectly fine.

I know not how to be an individual,
although biologically, yes, I am my own person.
But still, biologically, I am to form new flesh and blood with no prior instructions.
How to craft a cerulean personality that was to sprout from my own mental illness

It hurts, the hollow throb of losing—losing someone always does. But it was different this time. “It’s not fair!” She wanted to scream a blood soaked cry into the world, one begging for lost time back and just one more chance. Perhaps it wasn’t fair.

Independence is about the freedom one deserves,
a right one must have to live.
A right to breathe, to dream, to write their own story in a world
we call ours.

I watch as the sun sets,
the beautiful descent of a once glorious noon,
falling down, down, down,
leaving in its wake, a bloody path of oranges, pinks, reds,
—a shade of orange reminiscent of a raging fire,
A fire that destroyed a family’s home

I.

This is what it feels like to die.

The NRA headquarters is blown to smithereens by children holding bombs made of
acrylic paint and shredded OshKosh overalls.

She looked in the mirror and thought about death. Not the depressing and gloomy type, just
the type that meant “farewell.” It felt very diminutive to think about the end. She was standing
there alone looking into her dirty mirror, processing herself. How was it possible that one day

In the mirror, I gaze, a face that is not my own,
A visage of a monster, chilling to the bone.
What defines a monster, but our own perception anyway?
If they were the epitome of beauty, we’d see them in that way.

I was too tired to cook last night. I felt like falling asleep.
I drank coffee for lunch because homework couldn’t stop piling up.
My mind forgets the battles won, the dragons slayed.
All the blood, sweat and tears I had to push through to get to this point.

Your ethos charmed me so
Confidence and ambition laced in every breath
I was struck by cupid’s arrow
You were the one with the wings

I sit here and scroll
A video pops up next
Its subject?
Oh my.

It talks about how grandparents are running our country
And grandchildren on the streets
Waiting to die.

What am I?

The room around him was littered with junk food packaging. Piles of them. Crumbs patterned his desk. His eyes were bloodshot red and his arms stiff, due to days of slim to none motion. His hair was a fury of strands and his soiled clothes unwashed for weeks, both reeked unpleasantly.