Through the Osborne Writing Center at Hathaway Brown, a group of Upper School students recently collaborated to produce a poem that is being highlighted in the 2013 Traveling Stanzas initiative at Kent State University.

The girls' poem, "On the Morning, 9/11," is now being circulated throughout the region by way of illustrated postcards and posters on display in the interiors of Northeast Ohio area buses and transit systems. Riders can enjoy the work on Cleveland RTA trains and buses and the Akron METRO and Portage County PARTA bus systems.

Traveling Stanzas was started in 2009 in an effort to promote awareness of poetry and graphic design within the community. Kent State's Wick Poetry Center conducts an outreach program for non-professional writers, with undergraduate and graduate English students guiding the sessions. Poems are selected by Wick Poetry Center Director David Hassler for use in each edition of the Stanzas. Designs are created in the student-staffed Glyphix design studio with guidance by Creative Director Valora Renicker.

Kent State University senior Anthony Jandrokovic illustrated the HB poem. "On the Morning, 9/11" was compiled by Osborne Writing Center Director Scott Parsons, with contributions from HB seniors Jessie Adkins, Michelle Chapman, Alden Cowap, Danielle Frankel, Caitlyn Frohring, Joyce Guo, Olivia Julian, Sylvia Krebs, and Claire Ashmead '12.

On the Morning, 9/11

On the morning the towers fell
The chocolate milk didn't taste the same.

I was a child living two separate lives.
I trusted too easily, then not not enough.

The cemetery became too familiar,
Like a full moon illuminating a sky.

There's a third plane, I learned in math class, after X and Y.

I became the kind of person who laughs when she is sad.
For a long time, I wasn't sure who I was.

In customs with my parents,
The stamp on my passport left a permanent mark.

I realized I could write if I wanted to, and I did,
The stopped being scared all the time.