Southwest Archives | The Decameron Project

The
Decameron
Project

The
Decameron
Project

The
Decameron
Project

Region: Southwest

"I tear through the streets as I inhale the lightbulbs, sharp static electricity..."

"I am Ivan. People call me the monster, the dark beast, the boogeyman. But I simply suffer from a disease..."

Ivan

Julia

Starks

Mesa

9th Grade

"There is no mapped world. This truth you hold under your ribs, where most mortals..."

"Children of the borderland, intrepid space travelers, this will not be your last winter. These painful..."

Ulysses Speaks to the Children at the Border

Samuel

Cooper

Santa Fe

12th Grade

"Urgency grows in my brain, which feels like a two-dimensional void. I kick upwards..."

"I click my teeth. I taste my own blood, but ignore the anxiety that all my teeth will fall out. I would..."

Things That Lie (abridged)

Emma

Meyers

Santa Fe

10th Grade

Staring at herself in the mirror. She smiles. Her hair is perfectly curled away from...

Elenore grabs the picture frame out of her purse. Inside the frame are Ripped Tickets. Elenore smiles at them.

Ripped Tickets

Anicia

A.

Denver

Bear Creek High School

9th Grade

"People will lick her clean, Husbands and their Hearts, and she will be able to watch..."

Mature Content

"Marjorie is a Clockwatcher. She sits in a room and watches the Clock. Its face is round and flat. It is..."

A Pithos is a Wife is an Empty Jar

Gemma

Trimble

Phoenix

Other Grade

"Fastball, Fastball, Fastball, everything is working, now all I have to do is get this..."

"A baseball, a white little speckle, spirals towards me as I dig my back foot into the batters box. The..."

A Journey Through A Baseball Game

John

B

St. Louis

North Kirkwood Middle School

Other Grade

"What if I say...I feel nothing. It might sound weird but I’ve been through so much..."

"People don’t know what happened to you; they assumed you are content in this world… If people could see..."

This Corner of The World

Karlie

Gilbert

St. Louis

North Kirkwood Middle School

Other Grade

"Now a small crowd is watching on as he wrestles with the wheel..."

Parking Space

Samuel

Cooper

Santa Fe

12th Grade

"Each speck had an ember inside, a manifestation of love..."

The stares of the cruel eyes penetrated through me, transmitting a notion that my body was some sort of...

Skeleton Love

Joseph

C

Las Vegas, Nevada

12th Grade

"You used to be the girl who loved dragons."

Armor doesn’t fit over stretch marks. Stainless steel dissolves when it meets your numb, purple scars...

The Dragon

Emma

Meyers

Santa Fe, New Mexico

9th Grade

"But never, in all his 78 years of living on the river, did Ildefonso think the Puerco would come for him, and not like this, not in his beloved little Toyota truck..."

Every year, when late Spring brought the snowmelt from the San Juans, the Rio Puerco took a victim...

Crossing the Rio Puerco

Samuel

Cooper

Santa Fe, NM

11th Grade

"My throat is swollen and achy. My body is telling me not to breathe. I try to stop myself. But it’s the same, it happens every time..."

Growing pains. A funny phrase. I stand at 161.5 centimeters tall. If you don’t know what those numbers mean, it means short. I haven’t experienced the growing pains that come along with the change in height most people go through. For me, the growth of a few centimeters is enough, even when my friends are a head taller than me...

Warm

Aya

Kaneko

Boulder, Colorado

Dawson School

11th Grade

"He never really showed emotion or even smiled, and he always wore the same black suit with his red tie and his white shirt..."

There is a historic mansion in Detroit on the east side of town. It's located in a city named Abandoned. The reason why this mansion is so memorable is that the entire town was deserted, except for one house with a little boy and two grandparents. The little boy's name is Brahms...

The Boy

Elijah

Chernoff

Boulder, Colorado

Dawson School

11th Grade

"They would gossip about people they hated in Italian, and would share things that made them happy in Greek."

It was an average day for Angelica. She was awoken by her mother screaming in Greek, telling her to get up for school. It wasn’t always a chore to go, but she felt more tired than usual.

Waste Away

Alex

L Dupont

Boulder, Colorado

Alexander Dawson School

12th Grade

"Two tusk sharp enough to puncture the skin of any man brave enough to face it."

As I dipped my fingers into the paint I thought of the coming day. I extend my hand and press it upon the rock, sheathing my family with the paint in my fingers.

Crafting The Undesired

Ignacio Urbina

Gonzalez

Longmont, Colorado

Alexander Dawson School

11th Grade

"Somehow her smile grew even bigger, and her eyes sparkled as the sunlight faded into the night."

I was studying, as usual, for whatever my next assignment was at school. Dragging myself through school week by week trying to avoid the virus.

2020: Rocky Roadtrip

William

H.

Longmont, Colorado

Dawson School

11th Grade

"I pretend I am in her arms, the coat is her body. I run my hand over my forehead and through my hair. Over and over, just like she used to so I could sleep."

The lights don’t turn on anymore. And the sink dribbles but doesn’t run.

Glory Be

Aviva

N

Santa Fe, New Mexico

9th Grade

"The two friends slowly entered the house. Hand in hand. Sam could feel Anna shaking with fear..."

Sam, Timmy, and Anna always did dumb stuff. They were just regular teenagers messing around and letting their curiosity take them places. They loved to get together and play games, stay out late, and go on adventures. One of their favorite games was truth or dare...

Truth Or Dare

Brandon

Day

Longmont, Colorado

Dawson School

12th Grade

"At any moment he knows he could either be kidnapped or at the worst be murdered. He works in a dangerous industry and has hopes to get out of it one day."

Mature Content

Adrenaline is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, especially in conditions of stress, increasing rates of blood circulation, breathing, and carbohydrate metabolism and preparing muscles for exertion.

Adrenaline

Brandon

Day

Longmont, Colorado

12th Grade

"The moonlight slowly morphed into a glowing woman who wore a white dress that spanned the ocean breadth..."

She thought that when people died, they were gone, forever. Her mom and grammy turned into dust at the cremation center. She poured their dust into the ocean off the coast of California, the same place where they had lived for so long and died so young...

Freedom

Estasia

McGlothlin

Longmont, Colorado

Dawson School

12th Grade

"I tear through the streets as I inhale the lightbulbs, sharp static electricity..."

"I am Ivan. People call me the monster, the dark beast, the boogeyman. But I simply suffer from a disease..."

Ivan

Julia

Starks

Mesa

9th Grade

"People will lick her clean, Husbands and their Hearts, and she will be able to watch..."

Mature Content

"Marjorie is a Clockwatcher. She sits in a room and watches the Clock. Its face is round and flat. It is..."

A Pithos is a Wife is an Empty Jar

Gemma

Trimble

Phoenix

Other Grade

"There is no mapped world. This truth you hold under your ribs, where most mortals..."

"Children of the borderland, intrepid space travelers, this will not be your last winter. These painful..."

Ulysses Speaks to the Children at the Border

Samuel

Cooper

Santa Fe

12th Grade

"Urgency grows in my brain, which feels like a two-dimensional void. I kick upwards..."

"I click my teeth. I taste my own blood, but ignore the anxiety that all my teeth will fall out. I would..."

Things That Lie (abridged)

Emma

Meyers

Santa Fe

10th Grade

Staring at herself in the mirror. She smiles. Her hair is perfectly curled away from...

Elenore grabs the picture frame out of her purse. Inside the frame are Ripped Tickets. Elenore smiles at them.

Ripped Tickets

Anicia

A.

Denver

Bear Creek High School

9th Grade

"Fastball, Fastball, Fastball, everything is working, now all I have to do is get this..."

"A baseball, a white little speckle, spirals towards me as I dig my back foot into the batters box. The..."

A Journey Through A Baseball Game

John

B

St. Louis

North Kirkwood Middle School

Other Grade

"What if I say...I feel nothing. It might sound weird but I’ve been through so much..."

"People don’t know what happened to you; they assumed you are content in this world… If people could see..."

This Corner of The World

Karlie

Gilbert

St. Louis

North Kirkwood Middle School

Other Grade

"Now a small crowd is watching on as he wrestles with the wheel..."

Parking Space

Samuel

Cooper

Santa Fe

12th Grade

"Each speck had an ember inside, a manifestation of love..."

The stares of the cruel eyes penetrated through me, transmitting a notion that my body was some sort of...

Skeleton Love

Joseph

C

Las Vegas, Nevada

12th Grade

"But never, in all his 78 years of living on the river, did Ildefonso think the Puerco would come for him, and not like this, not in his beloved little Toyota truck..."

Every year, when late Spring brought the snowmelt from the San Juans, the Rio Puerco took a victim...

Crossing the Rio Puerco

Samuel

Cooper

Santa Fe, NM

11th Grade