The lines are clean and defiant. They name our aches, our hurts, the paradoxes of our living, and slay that demon that dogs our days, fear. By the poem's end, I'm washed clean.

This community poem was created using submissions by: Heidi Glenn, an NPR editor in Washington, D.C. David Epstein, West Hartford, Conn. Paul Constantine, Boulder, Colo.

A tough four years but Coxon, who now goes to college in Maine, turned that pain into poems with a purpose. “I started writing poems when the bullying ended, once I finally found my voice and ...