Sometimes I lie awake at night and dream
I think of all the things I left behind:
the whispering woods, the ivy creeping green,
the little stones and fossils I would find.
The ponds with names given to match our own
and little snail shells floating on the top
I’d wade in to see how the plants had grown –
Sometimes I wish the memories would stop.
We’d splash around and build dams in the creek
catching frogs and skeeters in our fingers.
The trees around us echoing our shrieks,
the shy ghosts of which still seem to linger.
And now, no matter how hard I may strive,
Never again will I feel so alive.

Loie Schiller is a College first-year and prospective English major. She wrote “A Memory” about her childhood growing up in rural Iowa surrounded by 200 acres of forest in the beautiful Driftless Area. She wrote this sonnet in 2020 during her sophomore year of high school, after moving for the first time in her life. The poem is about childhood, nostalgia, and desire for simpler times.