{"id":3775,"date":"2025-12-19T14:46:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T22:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/?p=3775"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T22:47:24","slug":"family-creative-writing-contest-runners-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/family-creative-writing-contest-runners-up\/","title":{"rendered":"USC Dornsife Magazine Fall 2025 \/ Winter 2026 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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USC Dornsife Magazine Fall 2025 \/ Winter 2026 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n
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\n\n \n Congratulations to contest runners-up, Maria D. Lerma (English with a minor in Russian studies, \u201987) who won second place for \u201cFamily Resources\u201d and Runlin Liu (BA, applied mathematics, \u201926) who won third place for her poem \u201cHold Me.\u201d Both won unanimous praise from the judges for their fine work.\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n \n December 19, 2025<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Family Resources<\/h2>\n

By Maria D. Lerma<\/p>\n

Sitting around the wooden, cracked kitchen table as the midday sun suddenly splathered through the window, my younger brother and I gleefully absorbed the reading, writing, and math lessons my mother imparted during the rare moments of quiet when my father was at work and we were not running around with the boisterous neighborhood kids. Being younger, my brother just said \u201cah\u201d to all things new and mysterious. My mother did not want to yield us to Head Start, possessively possessing us for just a bit longer \u2014 before the urgent siren call of kindergarten and 12 years of schooling beckoned. At least that was what my mother thought. Later, when I decided that I loved school, I asked her how long it would last. She counted from 1st grade to 12th grade; I was disappointed. Much, much later, I learned I could go to college \u2014 and beyond.<\/p>\n

My mother would get La Opinion<\/em>, which my father bought every morning from the corner newsstand. She went to the comics section and had us spell and sound out the words from \u201cLa Periquita\u201d (The Parakeet).\u00a0 Afterwards, we would do arithmetic, using dried pinto beans to add and subtract the numbers my mother had written on the smelly paper with the yellow backing she would get from the egg market we would frequent on Saturdays. She was our first teacher \u2014 despite not finishing elementary school.\u00a0 Then, she would give us crayons to draw on that stinky paper.<\/p>\n

When I went to kindergarten, I was placed in a bilingual classroom, where I could be a periquita<\/em> myself, chattering about the latest telenovela episodes with my new friends. When my teacher realized that I could read and write in Spanish, she placed me in a monolingual English class. My world became a sad, silent one. My mother could not help me with homework.\u00a0 Resourceful, she took out a Sears catalog to look up words that matched the pictures in my assignments. Regrettably, there were no pictures of a cat or a rat. A teacher\u2019s aide suggested that my mother take us to the public library, where I found books with pictures of cats, rats, hats \u2014and dogs, dinosaurs, and ducks.<\/p>\n

At two, my daughter responded \u201cah\u201d to everything, which her older brother translated for my husband and me. The words were apparently \u201cgracias\u201d and \u201cde nada.\u201d My mother and father were worried. She, however, sang the \u201cRebelde\u201d telenovela songs \u2014 she sang before she spoke. \u00a0I got her a CD.\u00a0 Resourceful. At four, she decided she had to prepare herself for kindergarten \u2014despite being in preschool. She got a clean notebook and continuously wrote down the whole text from a book about a mouse in a house. Then, she wanted to write down other words. She found a book she had gotten as a birthday present and would look at the pictures to decide how to write the word. Resourceful. Family is a chain of events where every beginning is a middle and never an end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Hold Me<\/h2>\n

By Runlin Liu<\/p>\n

They hold me \u2014
\nmy mother\u2019s hand wrapped tight around mine,
\nsteadying my first uncertain steps,
\npulling me forward into a world I did not choose.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nwhen I leap from the rusted slide in kindergarten,
\ngravity tugging me down,
\nmy father\u2019s arms catching me before the ground can bruise.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nwith flour that had been kneaded into a dough\uff0c
\nwith fish bones picked clean,
\neven when the taste of duty lingers longer than the salt.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nin the trembling hands of a beloved one fading,
\nwarmth seeping into coldness,
\na grip that softens, then disappears,
\nleaving silence heavier than flesh.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nin expectations pressed onto my shoulders,
\nthe watchful eyes that do not blink,
\nmeasuring, weighing,
\na balance I can never tip in my favor.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nin raised voices that scrape my throat raw,
\nin arguments that end not with resolution
\nbut with the sting of tears unshed,
\nthe ache of words swallowed back.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nthrough the thin wires of ocean-crossing calls,
\nstatic humming like an old prayer,
\ntheir questions following me
\ninto time zones they do not inhabit.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nso tightly I cannot tell
\nwhere their grasp ends
\nand where I begin.
\nThey hold me \u2014
\nnot perfectly, not always softly,
\nbut with a persistence that endures,
\na love still learning its shape.<\/p>\n

And still \u2014
\nthey hold me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\n Creative Writing Contest Winner\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n
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\n USC Dornsife Magazine\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Fall 2025 \/ Winter 2026<\/h2>\n

The Family Issue<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
\n\n \n \n \n\n Back to Issue \n <\/svg>\n<\/a>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n \n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":970,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUSC Dornsife Magazine Fall 2025 \/ Winter 2026 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/family-creative-writing-contest-runners-up\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"USC Dornsife Magazine Fall 2025 \/ Winter 2026 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up - 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