Honorable Mention – 2025 Beverly Hopkins Contest for High School Students

Imagine I Make it Out Alive

by SCARLET BROTHERS
Nerinx Hall High School

Imagine, for a moment, 
That you are a girl who is a boy who is stuck in Missouri.
          Reach out to the ocean.
               It’s far, yes.
          Reach out.
Stretch your palms into the foam,
          Let the tide lap at your fingers like 
          Something huge and terrible.
Plant your pointer finger wet onto your tongue.
          Can you taste it?
          The salt, I mean,
               Or the freedom.
Here are the jagged rocks.
          Here is the water, and here the sky,
               And if there is a line between, you cannot see it.
          Here is the night. Here is the ocean.
They can swallow you whole.
          Imagine, for a moment,
          That you let them.
               Imagine that you don’t.
          Suppose at one point you heard that
The only way to beat a riptide is to swim sideways.
          Now suppose you find yourself in the type of riptide 
          Where all your senators want you dead.
Swim sideways.
          There is no door out of Missouri,
          But there are cracks.
Imagine, for a moment, 
          That you are very small.
Swim sideways.
          You have a book.
               The kind of book where everyone forgot 
               What Jesus really said
          So they made it up for themselves.
Here is the riptide.
          Imagine you can hear the sound of ripping paper.
          Imagine you can smell the fire.
Here is the book.
          Throw another sheet into the flames.
               Reach out to the ocean.
                    Swim sideways.
Just swim.