Discovering new relationships, particularly that first love relationship, is often a universal coming of age experience for teens in high school. With that comes the sense of understanding things like relationship boundaries and identity as a couple and as an individual and what things like codependency mean. KHS poet Zariah  and artists Dominick takes a look at that discovery of love and self in her poem Cry of a Lover and his drawing Eyes of Reflection. 

Cry of a Lover

Zariah Smithwick 

you make me feel so primal.

stripping me of all individuality.
bringing me down to a basic level of need. taking away all wants and desires.
with you comes a sense of necessity.

a sense that i’d be lost without the presence of your spirit in my life.

a sense that i’d waste away if you weren’t here to consume the entirety of who i am,  

and all that i’ll ever be.

– cry of a lover pt 1

part of me feels this is why I am so infinitely bound to you.
i’m fearful that if you were to walk away from me, while in such an intense space; 

drowned in emotion and vulnerability…
that i’ll fall apart.

that i’d be stuck here, senselessly in love.

so profoundly in love, that nothing of worldly matter would be able to pull me up.

boundlessly in love with a figure in a dream i once lived; boundlessly in love with a figure 

 in a dream  

I’ll never get back.

– cry of a lover pt2

Be sure to check out Kenwood’s past creative writings and art published in our annual literary magazine The Bluebird Voice . This is the fifth year of the return of the Bluebird Voice here at Kenwood High. Interested student writers and artists can learn more about publication opportunities with the newspaper, yearbook, and literary magazine here at Kenwood by seeing Ms. Glenn or Ms. Cooper in the English wing.