![Students in the National Art Honor Society work on the Mount Hood mural on the window of SouthLake Church. The students brought a variety of paints and mixed their own custom colors. “Instead of brushstrokes, we’re doing more dabbing, because it gives [a] better impression of tree foliage, rather than looking like actual brush strokes, because if we’re painting trees, we need it to look like trees,” Crawford said.](https://wlhsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_2397-1200x900.jpg)
![Main Street said farewell to summer on Aug. 30 through the second annual Chalk Walk Art Festival. Ruth Offer, Chalk Walk organizer, brought this tradition from Wyoming in an attempt to make use of the renovated sidewalks of Willamette Falls Dr. “[This is] a community event for the kids,” Offer said.](https://wlhsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-12-1200x803.png)
I walk from darkness into the light.
The galaxy painted in the sky.
So many stars
My mother once said “your eyes shine like the stars”
When you wish upon a star
But sooner than later the stars fell.
The ground breaking away from me, fire under my feet, the feeling of walking on glass
A rope drops, a rope to grab onto.
My hands sliding,burning.
It snaps
A rope that was a strand of my mother’s hair, as brittle as her bones
The only thing left on her pillow after she left, a single strand.
Burns and blisters tattooed on my hands
A tattoo of a world with a sword and a heart
Showing that the world will give you love, and then stab you in the heart with it.
You can’t count how many stars are in the sky, or how many raindrops fall in a rainstorm
Believe me, I’ve tried
But I could count the number of days I tried something and failed, 364
And the number of days I tried and succeeded, 1
But that’s all that mattered, 1,
1 day I will be who they want me to be,
And those 364 days were all just a rehearsal for the day I would stand up and speak my mind
And tell them I am not leaving going unheard, unknown, but understood.
