Writing on the Walls: Contestants Brooke O ´ Leary and Samantha Smith Reflect on Competition

By: Emerson Justus

Over the past few months, Redwood held its annual Writing in the Walls competition which is a competition for students to showcase talents such as poetry, art, and writing.

Brooke O’Leary ’22 was a participant in the poem category, and got honorable mention.

O’Leary says , “My poem The Rain was written for a free write Thursday. In Mrs. Links class, every Thursday we would do free write Thursdays where you can write whatever you want. It was raining outside and the poem just came to me”.

“In my poem I’m just trying to reiterate the message(of the poem), that no matter what we do, we can’t satisfy everyone, so we should always try to be ourselves”. 

Samantha Smith ’24, who is the artist who created the photo for the poem says, “Before I picked the pictures for the contest I was looking for five pictures that mean something to me and this picture happened to be one out of the five. This picture had three things that mean something to me: the beach, sunsets, and my childhood. The little girl in the picture is me when I was little.”

“My mom was actually the one who took the picture. I was the one who rotated it so that the reflection on the water would be on the top. I also did some editing on the photo so you could see the girl in the photo clearly” Smith says.

Together these girls worked on this poem and picture to receive an Honorable Mention.

Below is the poem: 

Watching through my window as I see a gray colored sky.

I sit in solitude.

I know a lot of people who hate the rain, 

And I never really understood why. 

Rain is comfort.

Rain is laying in bed, book in hand, and not a care in the world.

Rain is jumping in puddles with sopping wet boots and bright eyes.

Rain is romance,

Kissing the one you love under the storm.

How could one hate such a beautiful thing? 

But as I have grown older,

I began to notice humans hate beautiful things.

We are never satisfied when it is rainy we want sun, 

And when it is sunny we want rain.

What a funny thing we do.

But with this knowledge,

I have learned to be myself fully.

No matter who I am or what I do,

Humans hate beautiful things ,

And humans are never satisfied .

So why not be myself?

There is no time in life to be anything by me. 

I will forever be the rain.

I will be the bright eyes and wet boots and romance. 

Even  if someone dislike me, 

I will forever be me.

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