Like all my writing, “Birds of dinosaurs” is the crossroad between specific events and my dreamscapes. It’s a diaristic letter where bedtime stories, childhood uncertainties, and timeless scientific theories map their way into growth that takes shape in fractured relationships, college application, and budding teeth. Unsigned with certainty, I know I’ll outgrow this moment but I’d always be my mother’s child, bird to the dinosaur.

Sophia Ma is a high school senior based in Southern California. An alum of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, their work is featured in Vagabond City Lit, Sardine Can Collective, and more. Read from their novella One Star in a Jar. Find Sophia cruising the foothills.

I: @yulikef1sh