​Teen Sequins 2024

Kayley Xu, Age 15 
Bio: Kayley Xu is a student and writer from San Diego, California. In addition to crafting poetry, she loves playing the violin, running, pasta, science, mountains, her dog, the beach, and charcuterie boards.

Eulogy for Nature 
​
Do you feel the New York City subway vents 
panting thick, muggy smog? Dense cloaks of April air 

smother the streets. The few trees left in Union Square 
reach their bare skeletons towards the sky 

in a final effort to reclaim their abandoned lives 
from belching chimneys, honking cars and zones marked 

for construction—from growling motorcycles, endless 
crowds. The last memories of Central Park’s green echo 

through the future generation’s minds before being 
sucked back into smoke. The ponds once held magic, once 

quieted spring’s sleeping buds, now reflect 
the gray sky like a smudged mirror. In shackles, Lady 

Liberty’s enshrined in gray clutter—plastic factories, airplanes circling 
to land, high rises faceless against the wind—her blue-green fire 

turned back to rusted copper now, torch fading 
in this irreversible midnight haze. The horizon 

is tainted with Manhattan’s unforgiving 
scars, this skyline that once delivered pastel dreams from day 

to day, once resistant to grime. Now, the future 
reads nature’s eulogy. And, in the hollows 

of our hands, the present hears 
nature’s plea, neither silenced nor answered.