SECOND PLACE YOUTH CATEGORY
In our house we have a small version of Boston Common At Twilight enclosed in tinted blue glass. I remember thinking at first that the colors didn’t match; the warm, dusty browns of the painting with the cold, clean blue of the frame. One winter, we walked past Frog Pond. I glimpsed the surface, icy blue and frosted with skate marks, between all the people bundled warmly in their brown coats. Later, on Beacon Street, I looked up at the brownstones, striking against the cornflower blue sky. Blue and brown. Brown and blue. The colors had been right all along.
Author: Isabella Kahn, 15 years old, Arlington.
Illustration: Valentina Ceballos Díaz