Rylies Retreat's

Dear Yona Harvey, I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to reach out to express my gratitude and respect for the powerful experience I had while reading your poem " Hurricane ". I was looking through many poems during my English class this year and encountered yours, and it has stuck with me ever since. Your word choice and the way you wrote your poem resonated with me deeply. The impactful voice conveyed throughout the poem reflects the tone of devastation and release. I could feel and understand the emotions through not only the hurricane itself but also the emotional storm it brought upon you and the world. As you use the hurricane as a metaphor and personify it, I can vividly see the resilience you have faced in hardship, which resonated with me as recently I have faced my own. The structure of your poem also stood out to me as I recognized the repetition of the phrase "she do". To me, it almost seemed like a prayer of affirmation and a sense of your daugh...

Show up, fight, be eager, I do. But my heart aches. His words are cold, sharp like glass. The ring hums beneath my feet.  His silenced anger is louder than any word, Never fast enough, Never hard enough, Never the version of a "man" he's hoping to see.  Show up. I do. Be eager. I do. But I ache. His words cold,  brutal, shattering. Nothing pleases him.  My body trembling as my feet fall into the ring, fearful and uneasy.  His silence crashes upon me, stronger than anything he could have said. I'm here, but I am not a man. Therefore, I will never be enough for him.  As I broke down this poem I embraced the "mess" Royal talks about in her essay, "Art of the Mistake". My original version was more structured, and could have a couple different ways of being interpreted. But when I broke up the words and let the poem fall apart, it became more real. It's the understanding of the poem where we find the raw vulnerable parts of its meaning.  Specificall...

Now that I have reached the middle of my senior year I have come to understand that everyone has their own way of seeking fulfillment. Reading the book S iddhartha  has deepened my understanding of peoples search for meaning and self- discovery. Siddhartha goes through life questioning everything, but later realizes that fulfillment cannot be found through another’s teachings. This is a lesson at our age many of us fail to realize.  In school I work hard, in church I listen carefully, and in sports I put forth full effort. I am doing everything "right" but many times I feel like something is missing. It's like I'm running a race but never reaching the finish line.  Does fulfillment need to be actively pursued or is it purely based on patience throughout life’s journey? I have learned that there is a place for effort, but also a place for stillness. This semester I want to remember that while striving for my goals is important, I also need to make time for moments of ...

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When you think about it, the world is filled with an infinite number of different points of view. Everyone views every situation slightly differently.  When I was eleven years old, I was into theatre. On August 18th, 2018, I had my first big performance: Beauty and the Beast . Following my performance, just an hour after, I was rushed out of the theatre by my father and (soon-to-be-stepmother) to a nature trail where I was placed in a portable chair and thrown a bag of candy. That's when I realized: my father and stepmother were getting married. Right there.  On that trail.  Immediately.  Sitting there, I could feel the tension between my internal thoughts and the external reality I was suddenly thrust into. My role as a child witnessing this moment felt awkward—why wasn’t I included in the decision? The disconnect between my perspective and the large events unfolding around me was shocking. My father and stepmother's point of view was focused on the joy of starting ...

It's interesting how humor, in its many forms, often hinges on the unexpected or exaggerated. A lot of the time, I don't catch on to sarcasm right away, which makes me feel like the gullible odd one out. Take, for example, last month when my dad and stepmom started making fun of how badly I parked at a restaurant. Half of my car was hanging over two spaces, and they sarcastically asked if I was planning on becoming professional at parking. At first, I thought they might have been genuinely upset with how poorly I parked, but then I realized they were just exaggerating the situation for a comedic effect. In the SNL clip we watched this past week in class, the woman secretly involved in the lesson says, "why do you have to criticize everybody?". This made me think about humor in general and how a lot of humor is based on making fun of people sarcastically or singling out one person. Humor often comes from something small and is exaggerated so we can laugh at something w...