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.
This week’s Young Writers Project entry is “Tasting Alive” by Erin Lashway, a senior at Mount Mansfield Union High School in Jericho.
Tasting Alive
By Erin Lashway
[T]hey tell me it’s too early in the morning to drink
sunshine,
warn me that I will stay awake if this late I drink
raindrops.
One hundred songbirds arc,
upside down rainbow,
upside down adventure,
rolling past the ominous ravens,
gravely staring until the
morning submits to the dusk,
and the luck recedes beneath the
haze of splintered tree-
tops, misty wisp clouds,
skittering across a ceiling of
water-colored glory and I
open my lips to the thunder-flavored raindrops,
as sweet as the liquid sunshine
I let fall on my tongue,
let the rays and the spray
burn the whispering hesitations from my throat,
melt the apathies from my mind
until they drip from my eyes,
salting the pavement
like a finely seasoned steak
because nothing tastes as good
as feeling alive.
They say it’s too early in the morning to consume the
wind,
say I’ll be wired all night if I take in
snow,
but I lift my arms to the coursing air,
undo my hair just to feel it
brush across the skin of my neck,
turn my back just to feel the unslacking
force pushing against my slight frame.
Untamable grants me wild,
unrelenting child,
sit upon my shoulder;
you won’t push me over, I know,
soft friend.
Make me blind, you white flurries,
deafen the world with your
muting blankets,
obscure the land with your fang-sharp icicles.
Deceive me;
purify us
for a little while,
style frosted-white,
the light-chambered radiance
until the warmth defeats
and the rain sheets stream
into my lungs
and pour out of my eyes
and I laugh with the sun because
nothing tastes as good as
being alive.
