Bianca Alvarado, 18

Bianca Alvarado hails from Austin, Texas, and is a high school senior in north Austin. She excels at writing fiction and creating worlds only she knows about, so others can know about them, too. Alvarado writes about pregnant teen mothers, the pressures and expectations of success, and haunting kinship felt with classmates to challenge preconceptions of “the fairer sex.”

Alvarado wrote her own children’s book in 2014, which was featured at a local elementary school, narrated and presented by Alvarado herself. Alvarado is passionate about feminism, deportation, and LGBTQ rights. She says, “Everyone should be equal. I shouldn’t be seen as any less than who I am because of my sex, my race, or my sexual orientation.”

UNTITLED

by Bianca Alvarado

I can say things that will make her heart crack,

But I never say them ‘cause they’re words I can’t take back.

I can tear her world apart with just a few words,

I could make her kill herself with just a simple verse.

I know things that she doesn’t even know that I know.

Should I ever use it against her, it would break her soul.

I could tell her everything about who I think she is.

It wasn’t my fault you never got to be a kid.

You shouldn’t be angry, none of this was me.

You shouldn’t have to yell or cry or even scream.

I could use my words against you, words so powerful you’d die.

And I wouldn’t even care for it’s you who made me cry.