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 Mead, a sophomore at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, says of her metaphorical poem, “This is Not About a Fish,” “I’ve only owned one fish in my life, and this poem is not about him. It’s one huge metaphor about how one person can change you.”
This is Not About a Fish
By Olivia Mead
[I] knew I wouldn’t have you for long;
you were a carnival fish.
Yet I bought you food and kept my eyes on you.
When I tapped on the glass, it scared you,
but I needed to know you were there.
Some days I would convince myself you’d live forever.
Other days I stared painfully at the cold glass,
watching your brightly colored scales pass
until I was left crying, pretty positive you were dying.
But the truth is
you were not the one to die first.
I was.
With every stabbing thought of you floating to the surface
a part of me died
and it fueled you in a way,
promising you’d stay.
But my best parts went first and soon I was not me
and you swam away
with the parts of me you had taken woven tightly in your fins
and I grabbed at you but you were slippery
and your slime stuck to me
and now all the other fish are harder to catch.
