Ali Engle-Tseng, age 14

This is a poem I wrote after learning about elegies in my eighth-grade language arts class. I wrote it to mourn the death of equality amid racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., and I hope that once people read it, they’ll open up their hearts and minds to equality.

The Elegy for Equality

Equality was once a living thing
Brought up when human voices first began to sing
Then suddenly brought down by the thought of Superior
Stabbed in the heart by that loathsome killer
The world cried out as it fell to the trend
Of many different cultures separated from friends
All that was left of it was ashy memory
The few golden days where to live was to be
And disagreement wasn’t anger or jealousy
But, alas, as we all know the story
From cold and closed hearts
Gone was Equality