About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Olivia Howe, a sophomore at Brattleboro Union High School, writes about empowerment in her piece, China Doll, which was published in Young Writers Project’s most recent anthology. She is photographed attending a YWP writing workshop.
China Doll
By Olivia Howe
[F]ragile little china doll,
never know if your next step
might end in peril,
spindle body, needle neck,
hair like silk but
losing its grip
in handfuls
grasped by a disbelieving palm
attached to only brittle bones.
You don’t recognize yourself
in the mirror.
Your silence was
transformative,
but if you only looked,
you could have been taught to find
the beauty once possessed
in your graceful hills and
plummeting valleys,
soaring eyes
and wind-blown hair.
But your true concern
prowls the streets,
a man you once called friend
before he prized the meat
from your core,
from your gentle hills,
with wormy fingers
searching, seeking,
hunting treasure.
When the morning scraped
in through the window gaps
and his shadow
orphaned you,
you pressed your full lips together
and resolved, perhaps
unwittingly,
to never share the truth.
That once luscious,
scarlet-painted,
porcelain mouth
that brought you so much misery,
that you vowed to never part:
Keep meals at bay;
never share, never feel.
Withhold it all, for there’s
no one
who remains
an ally.
And if he ever
did return?
Would you gladly
watch him burn
in the fire that blazes
still
behind those sightless glass spheres
pressed in your skull?
Or would you let him slip
away again
to prey on others
like yourself,
like the girl whose body
you once inhabited,
you once controlled,
and now she’s a husk,
fragmented ceramic,
crushed by his heel
into dust?
Hold your chin up.
Let him see
there’s more to you
than what he left
when he thought
he was done.
Let him know
you’ll still brave
the mighty ocean
and its wave
of life, ceaselessly sweeping away
and returning
sand and debris
to a rejuvenated state.
Show him your new,
your true
identity
of bold and blue,
of tears and truth.
And with your salt-strong
voice declare
what happened there
so you may pass
from this world
of sun-bleached sand
into the next
of hope,
of hydration,
of no starvation,
of courage and strength
and presence
in the present.
And he will know he is foe,
yet he may never again
cross your borders.
As a woman, you can be
your own ultimate barrier.
Defy and don’t hesitate,
and a new world shall
open its gate.
