By Lily Scheckner
11th grade | Montgomery Blair High School | Maryland
First place winner, Peace and Conflict category

With lines from “These Women Are Bringing Some Peace to War-Stricken Congo” by Hugh Kinsella Cunningham, Camille Maubert, and Sifa Bahati, a Pulitzer Center reporting project

Masumbuko, 1996

We don’t know it yet but

We will be in the hills of Ituri
longer than we will be alive
taking dirt-packed roads to
churches, schools, football stadiums
with our oil-slick sleeves held
over the heads of cubs not yet
wolves and

We don’t know it yet but

To war relentlessly
is to love the wolves, among the
purple-streaked skies and
the fronds caressing them,
for we remember the months
when it wasn’t fruitless and
blood-stained and

We don’t know it yet but

The wolves may have been
our sons and lovers but they
were never our friends
When we stop recognizing them
we will tell each other
that we women can no longer
keep our arms crossed and

We don’t know it yet but

We will sleep on the floor
with no warmth curled at
our hips beneath the blankets
But our bodies will harden
Our skin will become
blue-tinged steel and

We don’t know it yet but

Our trembling voices are
ciphers to those wolves
in green and red, the ones
we used to know, who live in forests—
For when their pupils fuse with
the ones who birthed them
men cannot refuse to listen and

We don’t know it yet but

One full moon we will place our
palms on the wolves’ foreheads
and say, gently, the bush is for the
animals, not for the people
It will be calm that night
Women in white dresses will
walk these roads

The men will keep their promise

Lily Scheckner, also published under Lily Eames, is a rising senior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her writing has been recognized by The Penn Review, One Teen Story, The National Poetry Quarterly, and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, among others. In her free time, Lily enjoys matcha lattes, oxford commas, and listening to Sufjan Stevens. In the future, she hopes to continue using her writing to magnify the voices of marginalized women everywhere.

Read more winning entries from the 2024 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.