By Evan Mackett
11th grade | Plymouth High School | Michigan
Finalist, Human Rights category
With lines from "Offtrack: The Long Road to Asylum for LGBTQ Refugees in Greece" by Valerie Pires, a Pulitzer Center reporting project
The sun is pulled below the waves
giving way to the scattered lights
that fill your late summer sky with color,
nebulas that look like the bloom of purple flowers,
lanterns lit every night
in a ritual of mourning.
You let your love sink
deep into your bones,
stashing away
plans for the future
made in hopeful resistance.
Empty hands cling to the rubber dinghy
that you put the last of your trust in,
bracing yourself as it bumps against invisible barriers,
borders that never really existed.
The tide pulls you toward the safety
of sharp rocks,
just to push you right back.
You lie down, look up, and count,
waiting for dawn
to bring a second chance,
searching the starry sky for a life
someone else thinks is worth living.
Trying to ground yourself, in the abyss.
The sky and sea don’t want you dead.
They consume indiscriminately,
without reason,
and let you drown with dignity.
As you are pulled from the water, a longing is pulled up with you,
grief washed up on shore with a tangled mess of seaweed, irises, and bodies.
Long after you’re back on land,
the salt water is still knee-deep,
stinging your collected wounds,
reminders that the emerald cemetery reaches far past the coasts.
Hope should have never been an unfamiliar feeling,
one that finds you at the worst times. When you’re drifting aimlessly,
grinning up at the night sky.
While you’re sure that you’re never going to smile again.
Or under the glow of dying stars,
above the glow of ghosts,
when you’re sure you’ve found peace,
and you can no longer tell if you’re looking up or down.
When you’re sure you’ve found the people who will hold your hand as the sky falls,
strangers who will share the uncomfortable silences
of eerily similar stories.
Strangers who will retouch your makeup when you cry,
painting your face with purples and greens.
The people who will stay with you as the colors in the sky begin to warm.
When the sun rises for the fourth time this week,
its light hides the stars
behind the safety of indistinguishability,
and helps decorate a mass grave with wild violets.
Evan Mackett is a rising senior at Plymouth High School in Michigan. Most of the art he’s made in the past has been visual illustrations, so using writing as a medium instead took some work to get comfortable with. He loves the outdoors and takes a lot of inspiration from space and plants. He wants to put focus on the fears that LGBTQ+ people around the world feel daily, but also the joy and hope that communities create for people like him.
Read more winning entries from the 2024 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.