‘Here, I am shrinking.’ Can this teen poet find her place in America?

The poems were Kaliyah Fletcher’s diary, a way for her to make sense of the world she was growing up in. They were just for her, at least until she decided to submit them to her school’s book competition.

Four months later, she walked into a high school auditorium with hundreds of others, her parents leading the way to the center rows. That night, she would find out whether other people cared about what she had to say.

“I’m nervous,” the 17-year-old junior said.

This school year, grown-up topics stalked children into classrooms. They worried as their parents lost jobs as federal workers. They scrolled social media and saw videos of police harassing young Black men. They heard about ICE arresting their neighbors.

In Prince George’s County Public Schools’ writing contest, students poured those feelings into poetry, plays, short stories and illustrated fiction that speak for a generation of kids grappling with the same issues.

The more than 200 resulting books were a window into childhood today: They delved into serious topics like immigration and race, and also honored the complicated feeling of always seeing yourself as a football player and then deciding that you actually want to play basketball.

“Tonight we celebrate imagination brought to life,” said Coquette Petrella, the supervisor of library media for Prince George’s County Public Schools.

Kaliyah was used to being onstage. She’s in the marching band, leading her high school’s trumpet section. She sings with the choir at Genesis Covenant Church. She had a solo at the Frederick Douglass High School spring concert, belting out the civil rights anthem: Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

Sharing her poems felt different, though, like she was exposing her heart to the world.

But maybe, she hoped, her words could spark a love for writing in a younger kid or make someone else feel a little less alone.

She reminded herself that this was why she was putting herself out there to be judged.

Her words

Kaliyah was born in Grenada, a Caribbean island country more than 2,000 miles from where she now goes to high school.

She remembers the taste of saltfish and bake for breakfast, the sounds of the soca and steelpan and the way the sea air always felt warm.

Her parents brought her to the United States when she was 3 years old, eventually making a home in Upper Marlboro. She remembers how unfamiliar America felt at first, the way she was taught to talk without her accent. Her daycare teachers reminded her to speak “proper English.”

Lately, as she’s listened to President Donald Trump’s comments about immigrants, she’s felt like he sees anyone who is from another country as not belonging here.

Back in Grenada, she was surrounded by people who looked and sounded like her. She confronted these feelings in her poetry, including writing about her home country as part of her entry in the district’s book-writing competition.

No one calls my name with rhythm anymore.

No one laughs with the same thunder,

or speaks with the kind of love

that sounds like a song.

Here, I am shrinking.

Quietly.

Daily.

Becoming more ghost than girl.

Refusing to shrink, she helped organize a student walk-out in February to protest immigration enforcement officers. She’s tried to speak up — in school and through poetry — when she sees injustice.

The law is meant to guard and shield,

But in its grip, too many yield.

A traffic stop, a harmless stroll,

Can steal a breath, can take a soul.

Her Instagram bio includes emoji representing her identity — a cross, two Grenada flags — and Bible passages that focus on faith and living in a way that puts complete trust in God.

One day, she wants to move back to Grenada.

After a trip there in 2024, she felt especially far away when she came home to Maryland. She missed the way everyone seemed to know each other on the island, never passing a person without saying hello.

She prayed on it, like her mom taught her, before pulling out her phone to type:

I’m tired.

Not of going to school,

but of being away.

Of stitching myself into a country that doesn’t

know how to hold me.

Her turn

She changed her outfit six times before the award ceremony.

“Let me get this right,” she told best friend Isaiah, who also submitted a book of poetry. “Is this an event where I can show up in jeans and a shirt, or do I need to be in my Sunday best kind of outfit? Or do I need to look like I’m going on a business trip?”

His assessment: “Business casual.”

She settled on a pair of dress pants, a tan open-knit sweater and her favorite earrings, a pair of music notes.

In Kaliyah’s writing category — individual poetry among 11th graders — there were seven submissions.

“Next up, is this Kaliyah?” asked master of ceremonies Dave Zahren. “Kaliyah Fletcher, nice to have you here. You look wonderful tonight. You get a first-place award for ‘Everyday Thoughts.’”

Her mom cheered as her dad held his phone up to record a video of Kaliyah walking across the stage.

Throughout the night, Kaliyah clapped for the fourth-grade boy in a red tie, who earned first place for “Swim Swim 2,” a picture story book about different breeds of fish becoming friends. She cheered on the first-grade girl in a yellow sundress who earned first place for “How Cats Got Into Our Homes,” a nonfiction book dedicated to the young author’s pet cat, Moose. And she smiled for the seventh-grade girl in a floor-length satin gown who received recognition in poetry for a co-written book titled “A Black Girls Diary,” which the young authors dedicated “to all the Black children in the world who feel the same way we do.”

Seeing everyone get awards, from young kids who weren’t as tall as the announcer’s lectern to the soon-to-be graduates, Kaliyah was full of appreciation. Each kid had their moment, to hear their name over a booming microphone, to walk across the stage and to be seen.

“I’m just happy,” she said.

Have a tip for our Prince George’s County reporters? Tell us here.