May Lafer-Kirtner
May Lafer-Kirtner is a member of the class of 2024 at South Eugene High School in Eugene, Oregon. She has been writing all her life, and after graduating, hopes to become a reporter and a novelist. After having a hard time in middle school, she started writing poetry and stories as an outlet for all of her most intense emotions—about friends, death, her chronic illness, and mental health struggles. She started trying to get published after reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower, because she hoped to remind other people they weren’t all alone.
Baked Into Me
I swallow slowly, letting the happiness baked into it wash over me.
I want to eat all of the love in the world
I do not want to be loveable,
I want to be all-consuming.
IN WHICH I TRY TO EXPLAIN TO MY FATHER WHY IT HURTS
“I AM SO TIRED OF BEING UNSEEN.”
We Are the Girls
“Ask a girl the first time she was afraid”
Ocean Girl
"I can’t remember the last time I have ever loved a girl not made of liquid nitrogen"
Becoming the Wicked Child
“I am full of fire and this time it is not burning me down/ It is lighting me up.”
Dime & Emmy
"I both miss her, and am over her, and am angry with her."
The Night I Wrote My First Poem
"The night I wrote my first poem was the same night I had my heart broken"
Spilled Blood
An opinion piece on the events of the Texas hostage crisis at a synagogue.
