hika.

Desiray Sanderlin is a first year, and plans to double major in English (with a creative writing emphasis) and studio art. Her poem, “Feverish,” will be published in the 2026-2027 edition of HIKA.

What inspired you to write your poem, “Feverish”?

The conversation that takes place in the poem, the one between me and my mom, actually did happen in real life—just a little bit differently. Basically, whenever I start to feel sick or I have a headache, I’ll often put my hands to my forehead and think, oh, my forehead’s really hot. And I’ll think I’m mildly sick for the day. But after doing that for a couple years, my mom once pointed out that, no, your hands are just freezing cold all the time, and I never really made that connection, because, well, my hands are my hands. They’re kind of always like this. It takes a minute to notice things that have always been natural to you. So when I did take notice, I realized that my forehead isn’t even cool, because if I were to put my arm to my forehead, they’d be the same temperature. So it’s just my hands.

Can you talk a little bit about your writing process?

Oh, let’s see, I think it was early 11th grade that I wrote this poem, particularly because one day I was just thinking about it and I thought, hey, why not make it into a poem? So I sat down one evening. I wrote it, and I thought it was pretty good, and then I completely forgot about it for, like, a year. Then when I submitted it to Hika, and heard all the feedback, I thought, Hey, this poem can be improved, since I have better writing skills than I did when I first originally wrote it. So I changed it around. It was honestly just sitting there for like a few minutes writing it.

And how did you start writing in the first place?

I don’t actually remember exactly how or when, just that for as long as I can remember, I used to make little ten-page books with a paragraph of writing on the top and a picture on the bottom, and I would sell them for $10 to my mom. I’ve just been making them since kindergarten. I’m not sure where the idea to make books and sell them came from, but it’s just what I’ve been doing. Though I always did like reading, so maybe I was just imitating the things I liked.

How do you think you’ve changed as a writer since then?

I definitely think more about what I’m writing. Like, I remember, one of the earliest stories I can remember writing was called The Life of V. V for Vampire, because she was a vampire girl. Honestly, I can’t even remember most of the plot of that story, just that I ran space on the pages and had to make the book longer because I couldn’t write as small as I can now. So I filled up tons of pages, very few pictures. No idea what I wrote. But I think she was just a girl who got turned into a vampire, had to fight a demon lord, and some other nonsense—the fact that I can’t remember the plot of it tells you just how nonsensical it was. But back then, I just kind of wrote stories to fill a quota, because I wanted to get 20 bucks from my mom. And also, I was just trying to think of whatever I could make into a coherent story. Nowadays, though, I write because I actually have an idea that I think I can make a good story out of. And when I look back at my old writing, all I see is mistakes…glaring, glaring mistakes. So now I just go back around, sometimes improving some of my old texts.

Do you have a piece that you’re most proud of?

Well, I would have said “Out of Time,” but after rereading it…no, it’s got so many mistakes. I mean, I write different types of work, so if I have to say in terms of poetry, I think my best one would be “Feverish.” Because it’s more of an experience that I’m talking about myself. And I think if I had to go with literary works, it’d have to be one of the books I’m working on. It’s a book I got called Repetition. It’s not done yet. I don’t even have the first chapter yet. It’s gonna be a long book. It follows the main character who can’t remember the time loops, but the side character can. So you basically relate more to the side character, the longer the story goes on, because you and the side character are trying to pick up where the story left off, but the main character is always catching up. I think it’d be a fun little narrative. Though I am trying to make everybody suffer, so maybe not fun!

Do you have any ideas or themes that you’re thinking of exploring in the near future?

Well, I do have four novels that I’m currently working on. Each one focuses on a different idea. The first one is essentially kind of a lack of continuation, I suppose. It’s called Repetition because everything repeats, there’s no ending. So the book is actually supposed to be a self contained loop, that the end of the book leads back to the start and it never truly stops. It’s kind of similar, if you’ve ever finished reading Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, the ending of the story leads back to the start over and over again. It’s a looping story that when you get to the end, the start changes up to you. It’s kind of different after you’ve read the story once before.

The next two are kind of just murder mystery stories. Both of them follow the idea of when the murderer gets away and what that means for the victims. In both cases, nothing ever truly happens. A lack of justice in that situation.

And the fourth book is just about humanity trying to survive in a world that has changed. Though that’s, like, more of a backdrop theme. This one’s more of, like, case solving. So, yeah, I suppose the only one that has a greater theme to it is the 1st one, which is just repetition. A never ending story. Also, the book is a loop, because I will not write a story that won’t end. I’d never stop writing. And people would eventually stop reading.

Finally, do you have any advice for people who want to be writers, but might be afraid to start?

Well, it’s never too late to start, and also you already know how to write academically, so all you gotta do is just speak from the heart and stop looking for sources. The best idea I suggest is find something you want to talk about. Honestly, start with fan fiction. Because you’ve already got a basis for a world, a bunch of characters that already exist, and it’s a great way to just make up new plot lines. Heck, even just rewrite some things straight from the book. It gives you a bit of practice, and eventually you can start changing things, adding your own characters, altering the world, until you’ve just started building things from scratch. There’s a lot of world building techniques you can use, such as building up a character, building up a world, and then seeing how and thinking about how they would interact, and then trying to make a plot around that. There’s no wrong way to write. It’s just however you feel like doing it.