While we adults struggle with life in a pandemic, you might ask yourself, how are the kids doing? Molly Hill can tell you.
The Minnetonka writer is founder of Blue Marble Review, a five-year-old online journal that publishes the work of writers ages 13 to 22.
Recently, she opened up submissions to ask young writers about their experiences and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they answered eloquently, thoughtfully, sometimes heartbreakingly. They also wrote with hope.
Malena Garcia wrote about celebrating her 17th birthday under quarantine in Spain.
The streamers and presents on the table "are almost enough to make the stifling air stop suffocating my lungs. Almost. … I wish we lived in a house with a garden instead of a tiny apartment. Or, that I could at least go out, and run. In France, people are allowed to go out for a run, but not in Spain."
Sixteen-year-old Eunice Kim wrote from Seoul, South Korea, about missing physical contact.
"Since we are in the business of rationing touch, I hold your hands in blueshift dreams every night. … I learn that when one sense is lacking, we find ways to compensate with stranger and smaller intimacies."
Mick Perryman, 14, of Moscow, Idaho, went to the now-closed high school where his dad is the principal and hauled home a 5-foot-tall carved wooden bear, the school mascot, which he put on the family's front porch to amuse passers-by.