Second Place – 2025 Beverly Hopkins Contest for High School Students

“I love how ‘To Believe’ incorporates many traditional prose poem techniques. The poem is conversational and associative and the imagery – ‘You were shaped like a cigarette, thin and waiting to be flicked into the dirt.’ – is on point.”

Niki Herd, 2025 Hopkins Contest Judge

To Believe

by ISABELLE COX-GARLEANU
Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School

Who do you pray to? What keeps you up? No God is still a faith,
you know. Absence is a presence. I want to know what you kneel
(be)for(e). Yesterday, your backyard was full of smoke, black smoke,
actually ash. Nicotine. We laughed. You were shaped like a cigarette,
thin and waiting to be flicked into the dirt. Two rings of light
hovered above your nose, halos or warning signs, I couldn’t tell. I’ve
been taught not to think too deeply. But what else is there to do?
You shared a story once about a man who walked into the ocean and
never came back. When I asked you why he didn’t, you shrugged.
“He just didn’t.” Another about a woman who carried a gun in her
purse but never learned how to shoot. She was shot in her late 40s by
some stranger on her way home. Couldn’t defend herself.
Apparently she had believed in it. Although I think a thing is only
useful if you know how to use it. A gun in a purse is just a weight. A
man in the ocean is just gone. You said people like to believe in
things that make sense. I told you that nothing makes sense. You said
that’s why people believe. And then you prayed.