Junior runners up, St Michael’s Collegiate School

“It always feels impossible,” my father tells me, “until it is done.”  Those words make me shake, as if a cold fog surrounds me, but the words seem to give him comfort. Those eight words are said multiple times a week, at every opportunity. The words trail out of his mouth and sink themselves into the room, shutting my sister off, making my brother as heated as I am cold. But my dad will repeat them, always coming back to them. And we let him, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much it reminds us that life is no fairy tale. Life does not always end happily. It will cut people out of your life as fast as a gardener cuts her rose.