You see the hazy vision of a girl floating amidst the endless abyss of space. The darkness is all-encompassing, but the glow emanating from her body brings a warmth to your fingertips. She blooms slowly but surely, a gorgeous blossom in the sky. When you close your eyes, you can feel the slide of her skin beneath yours, a touch so fiery and golden. When you open them, you find that she has vanished, a searing beam of light that you want to hold on to but must let go. The scorching yellow luster of her touch seeps into you, softens your bones and stains your complexion. You breathe in the heat, feel it cool in the space between moments.

You think of what the world means to you, nestled between the miracle of life and an infinite, sentient vacuum. Your world is the girl who carries a torrid supernova in her lungs, who regurgitates stars that glow like glitter, whose heartbeat matches the circle of day and night. She is the girl who remains suspended in the vastness of space, who never speaks but sees everything. The nothingness to which she is shackled to has sharpened her senses, raised her awareness to the unimaginable size of the universe. In comparison, you are so insignificant, so vulnerable, that you may as well vanish. You can feel the weight of the sky in her heartbeat, in the pulse of her slender wrist beneath your fingers. She is your world, without even knowing who you are.

The girl is lonely as she floats in a realm between your reality and hers. You see her through a distant looking glass, a mesh of cloud, fog, and fine dust. If you were to set aside the barrier she conjured to protect herself, she becomes real to you. Her eyes warm up, like dusky orange bleeding into the deep violet of your sunrise. Her mind is naked, open, susceptible. You feel your heart stutter, thrum away with the exuberant energy of your existence, and you feel both minuscule and enormous in your place in the world. You do not know anything about this glorious creature, but it only takes so long to become entangled in someone else’s existence. She is a part of your beginning, and will remain within you until your end. Her heartbeat keeps you alive, breathing vitality into your veins. You share her joy, the burden of her grief. For a single, breathtaking moment, she is less alone.

You kiss her because you can, because you know that she wants it too. Her vibrant eyelashes shadow the jut of her cheekbones, thin tendrils of darkness within an intense light. Her fingers linger on your jaw, drawing a feverish warmth into your numb skin.

Even with your eyes closed, you can feel her on every part of you. Her sunny mouth lingers on your bottom lip, before nudging down to kiss below your ear. Pressure glimmers in your belly, thickening until it feels like a nebula dangerously stretching across your insides. It heats your body, bringing it color and viability, flushing and trembling. The glide of her tongue against yours provokes an unmistakable spark, a feeling so ardent that you are nearly torn apart.

Ultimately, her orbit has shifted, ever so slightly, to overlap with yours. You are now a part of each other’s worlds, whether you are aware of it or not. The aching absence of space tugs you together, tangles your hair, mingles your breaths. She burns swiftly and ferociously, casting her brilliant rays unto your cool blue. You have not changed who she is, but you have most definitely altered her world to accommodate you, your hopes, dreams, interests, love. You begin your first revolution as a new entity. Nothing has ever felt so outlandish, yet you know you belong. Here, change is not a matter of otherworldly capacity, and instead one of will.

You have shown the girl who swims amidst stars in a navy winter sea what it means to be a part of something bigger than herself, more immense than anything she can imagine. You are too tightly tied to your bodily existence to comprehend the infinitesimal shift in the universe that you have caused. Instead of hurtling past her like an asteroid propelled off-course, she has tugged you in with her gravity. You circle one another, solitary pieces of a larger notion. She has found a friend.

Earth and life coincide, existing alongside one another with a set of unwritten rules. As such, the fragility of space and love are indefinitely bound together. The gravity between objects strengthen as space is removed, and they become more tightly coerced. Like that, you have clasped onto her, forever spinning in her vicinity, a permanent fixture in her world. You have changed one another for the better; simple and quiet, yet exuberant and memorable.

A fine light casts its beam through the smudged glass of the window beside your bed. A glorious kaleidoscope of faded colour settles upon the bedsheets; a soft beige on the uppermost right corner, a faint canary below it. The weather outside is rather mild and pleasant; the trees hum softly in the early July light. They unfurl their brilliant leaves and unloosen the energy pent up inside of them as the heat seeps ever deeper. You watch the vivid grasshopper that nestles itself between blades of grass underneath the backwoods.

This grasshopper, he is not quite like anything you have ever seen. A stream of an eccentric red laces the head of the insect, much like a piece of string suspended between the knots of a shoe. The outermost curve of his frail little wings bellow cerulean, though they dance almost purple under the yellow glow. He buzzes with a potential so vital that it cages your breath within your lungs. It astounds you. You find yourself folding a crease on the edge of your book, the content of its pages long forgotten. The curious grasshopper has managed to capture your eye.

The grasshopper makes the strangest of sounds, so loud and frenzied that the noise drifts easily in the summer breeze to the shell of your ear. Perhaps you are hearing things, and have finally severed the remaining threads of sanity, but you swear that the murmur deepens, as though something joins the harmony that the grasshopper has created. Maybe it was the deep-bellied song of a bird high above you. It could even be the melody earth itself excretes as it arouses from its slumber. But what had it unweave the last shreds of its trancelike dream?

Your eyes settle back onto the pitiful grasshopper. So frail, so easily crushed underfoot. His minuscule life, so effortlessly altered and transformed, for better or for worse. Yet look at how unbothered he was by such a notion! It did not matter to him that his lifeline grew thinner as the hour grew longer; he lives life with the same energy that had been bestowed to him at birth, carefree and uncomplicated. You loathe his simple existence.

The door cracks on its hinges behind you, effectively disconnecting you from your train of thought. Your eyes unfasten from their position on the grasshopper, and you turn to see who has come in. The sight of warm, wavy hair and endless ebony skin is unexpected, though certainly welcome. You had been apprehending an empty house for a much lengthier stretch of time. There is a fantastic little buzz of intensity, pure and elevated, underneath your skin. The itch deepens with every step he takes towards you. You meet him halfway, wrap strong arms around dark, bare shoulders.

And when you two are this close, almost nose to nose, forehead to forehead, breaths soft and bearing a hint of ivy-blossom and ripe fruit, who can blame you for losing your head? He leans forward, a silent may I? You cannot say no, never have. Even if you were to try, it is already too late. A laugh, as weightless and airy as a bird's feather, skims over your open mouth.

You instinctively breathe in, as if settling into the bottom of a creek. In the darkness, your senses seem to strengthen, create a pull, an atmosphere you were previously unaware of. Faintly, you hear the rustle of the single grasshopper outside. It is entirely possible that the grasshopper has been joined by others, and their restless declarations whisper and dissolve along with the other sounds of nature. You can hear, ever so faintly, a narrow hand sliding over fabric. You can sense him coming closer, closer, closer.

The first brush of your lips against his is light, astonishingly soft, and unfortunately anticlimactic. You open your eyes. Look him over. His eyelashes are still shadowing the apples of his cheeks, his pupils well hidden. He brings his hand up, fingers impossibly brief on your cheek, and runs his thumb over the upturned corner of your mouth. You feel it open. Your lips, just slightly parted.

Your eyes have quivered to a close once more, but you can sense his approach as he tilts his head and kisses your bottom lip, lingering just long enough for you to hesitantly follow the motion.

It is not unfathomable that the grasshopper, the trees, the earth, and even the sky above have entrusted you with their existence, given you that insurmountable string of exuberance and vitality, because you feel a tiny spark somewhere in your belly.

He comes again, now fitting your upper lip between his own. You echo him, gaining a sense of confidence and assurance. This new fibre of life inside of your stomach glimmers, thickens, spreads. There is now a tingle in your neck, deep colour spotting your cheeks and darkening your eyelids.

You feel him breathe out, and you know that he is smiling. There is a hint of a flow, a glide, when the inside of your lip meets his, dampening. The light contact, slick though not entirely unpleasant, provokes something ardent and hot in you. He pulls away to shift his position, folding both legs underneath him, and you move with him, unable to overlook your uninterrupted closeness. His hand slides back up the arch of your neck, pulling you forward, leaning in to press a barely-there kiss to your throat, a touch so brief yet exhilarating that the breath gets knocked out of you. You are not quite sure how your fingers have managed to place themselves in his hair, but you like the feel of the strands between your fingertips, how they seem to stream and fluctuate in your fist.

You step through the multitude of electric tunnels that litter your mind, take a right turn and then two lefts, switch off the single persistent voice that is telling you to stop. His lips are fluid, dynamic. With each nip and lick, it feels like your stomach is deliberately swooping, lifting, hollowing in. The absurd and inconceivable energy of the world feels unusually real and true—you wouldn't believe it otherwise. The room soon fills with your sounds, minute and plush and slippery, lips meeting and parting.

There is an unmistakable twist, or some kind of flutter, inside you. He draws close and kisses you, as carefully as the first time, but now you feel a dash of wetness over your lip. It is more than enough to make you startle, even though you were rather expectant. He gives you two terse kisses and then licks up, over the underside of your upper lip. It takes a moment, as if you are stunned by the way your nerve endings light up, but then you meet him, tongues brushing together lightly, sunny and glossy and alive.

He pauses, turning away for a second. In the breadth of the same instant he's back, grinning, and your mouth curls up, too. Your lips find each other again, easily. He is tilting his head and licking into your mouth, and you feel your gut grow tepid and swirl with an impassable emotion. Your skin is alight, sensitive and goose fleshed, as is his. You run a hand up his arm, without even thinking about it, coming to rest at his neck. Your fingernails scratch at the coarse baby hairs, coiling splendidly over and under your hands. He hums, halting yet deep in the back of his throat, when you catch the tip of his tongue between your lips, sucking softly for a moment.

You're on your back now, the bedsheets silken and unbearably supple under your arms and the base of your spine. There is a sheen on your lips, and your eyes are lazy and half-lidded, too careless to stay open. From here, you can still catch a glimpse past the windowpane, at the blue, blue sky and the bushes that fringe the bottom's edge. With a distinct focus, you can very nearly decipher the particular whistle of the grasshopper, though he's no longer in a position to be seen.

***

Title: I Pity the Grasshopper

Genre: Romance

Age range: 14-18

Word count: 1356

Author name: Nawaal Bhuiyan

Why my project is a good fit: This is my latest work, and I really do think that it showcases what I'm capable of in very few words. I am proud of this piece, and I really hope that it is satisfactory to those who read it.

The hook: I am vaster than the sky above me. / I thrum with the fibrous light of vitality. / I am the earth and everything below.

Synopsis: The speaker is spurred into contemplation through the influence of a grasshopper they catch sight of in their garden.

Target audience: Teenagers and young adults who enjoy descriptive writing

Bio: My name is Nawaal, and I'm a high school sophomore at Cairo American College. I have one younger brother. I really enjoy reading and writing, as well as listening to music and playing sporrs such as volleyball and basketball.

Platform: I write most of my stories on Wattpad and Archive of Our Own.

Education: Frobel Play School, Kazakhstan International School, and Cairo American College

Experience: I am an amatuer writer, so I do not have any prior publication or experience other than a handful of competition participations.

Personality/writing style: I really like writing descriptive prose, as well as poetry. My pieces tend to be very short, and resemble the "stream of consciousness" style.

Likes/hobbies: Reading, writing, and playing sports.

Hometown: Bergen, Norway and Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Age: 15