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Abigail Rakow is a sophomore nursing student at Catholic University with a love for poetry and visual art. Though different in their methods, she believes that both of these two art forms have the same purpose, distilling human experience into its most poignant form and allowing us to understand ourselves and each other better. Though unpublished, she has placed in competitions for her poetry and has exhibited two temporary installation shows with her oil paintings.
They hid in gray shallows, orange skins only rising
for food and for light, when little toddlers leaned
over the cracked slate edge, dropping bread,
giggling as one bites a finger, chasing after crumbs.
We could find an even brighter orange in the centers
of flowers that nodded their heads by the pathway,
yet we’d crouch over the pool ‘till our knees bled
and kick stones down the path when our teacher
called out our names. And when we’d finally run
to our parents at the end of the lot, we’d present
our offerings sculpted beneath a tiny furrowed brow,
blobs of clay formed with fat fingers into bulbous shapes,
something that looked vaguely like a fish, marbles for eyes,
and porcelain paint pooling in grooved scales.
It considers me now from the mantelpiece,
how I’ve grown since then, my hands
now skilled and slim. Strange how it’s smaller
than it once was, the first spark of a flame,
an imprint of this child upon the world
when she first learned the beauty of imitation.
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