"Never" by Lily Jessen (Grand Prize and Cumberland County Winner)

There are only three places 

where you can truly be freed of the trials of existing:

before, after, and never, 

which is a conundrum of sorts, for me.

I do not want to die, but

I do not think I want to turn fifteen 

either. I want to be like a Lost Boy, 

skipping, barefoot, through the forests of forever, crying

to the canopy and the crows 

a cacophony of defiant eternity that echoes

across the ocean, the divide,

to creep into the mainland

and hide in fairytales and lullabies—

a protest against what seems to be 

the very fundamental purpose of childhood: 

to grow up. 

People keep asking me: Are you going to take drivers ed?

I want to answer that I have no desire to drive, I want to fly 

on the wings of fairy dust, and land somewhere 

green and lush and shimmering

existing only in the whispers before bed

where I can finally feel found. 

And wait a minute, where are all the lost girls, and 

what tore them away from the second star to the right?

They are drawn, pulled to become mothers, and may only sit by the window

growing old waiting for either death 

or Peter Pan to sweep them away— whichever comes first.

This is a poem for them, a hope that

their island will be a time capsule of the present,

without memory, only movement 

through the fields and waters 

on the toes of children, never to return.

---

Lily Jessen is in 10th grade and lives in Cape Elizabeth. She has written and published short stories and poems through Telling Room publications, Stone Soup Magazine, Skipping Stones, Incandescent Review, and Root and Star. Her novel, The Pipe Tree, which won Stone Soup's 2022 Annual Book Award, will be released by Stone Soup Publishing this spring. When she isn’t fanatically planning the complicated plot of her next story, you can find her participating in theater, curled up with a book, or singing in her chorus.