Geisha dancers are like swans lightly touching the water. Their calm, graceful movements were completely different from the styles I’m used to, but just as powerful in how they told stories of love, sorrow, and nature.

Hula dancing is like the ocean—it holds history, stories, and emotion all in one. From ancient chants to modern ukuleles, it’s a powerful way Hawaiians share their culture with the world.

By Mahika Kapoor, age 14, Virginia.

I wrote this poem with a ten-minute timer to try to capture the frenzied mindset of the narrator in this poem. I wanted to see how fast I could capture the importance of the Holocaust, and how other people felt. I came up with this piece, “They Let me Live in Sound,” showing a child’s mind during the Holocaust, mostly based on the child Ellie Wiesel. Ellie Wiesel wrote the book “Night” to capture his dream of other people understanding the misery of the Holocaust. He will forever be remembered, and so will many other characters from the Holocaust period, such as Anne Frank. Anne had a dream to publish her diary she wrote during her two-year Holocaust hiding. These two historical figures both had dreams of people remembering the Holocaust, and for others to be able to vision how tragic their experience was through forms of writing.

The poem tries to capture how many people may have been feeling during the Holocaust in metaphorical ways.

—Mahika Kapoor, age 14.