Nina Oteria Foster, whose poem "Leaving It Behind" received Honorable Mention in this year's NCETA Student Poet Laureate Awards, is a senior at Raleigh Charter High School. She has written poetry since her middle years and has self-published a volume of poetry entitled Sunshine @ Midnight. For the past two years she has been the assistant at the NC State Young Writers' Workshop. Nina also won the At-Large award in the 2009 Raleigh Fine Arts Society short story contest for her story Caution: Slippery When Wet.
Leaving it Behind
by: Nina Oteria
chase me on the wind
chase me like change,
like revelry with no writhing regrets
chase me
into the chapped, chipped, charred corners
chase me
I challenge the pretty, prude past
chase me like freedom and failure and the fall
for I am on the wind,
unwieldy, changing dang direction on a whim
no seven sails,
no captain, nor compass
so chase me
chance, fate, change:
I challenge you.
chase me.
