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.
Zani Lewis, a seventh grade student who is homeschooled in Burlington, writes about the death of a loved one and the realization that he is gone forever.
Never Coming Back
By Zani Lewis
[S]itting by a lifeless form.
No idea that when we got back,
he would be gone.
Never knowing
that at any moment it could be the end.
Tears spill out.
Depression reigns.
But nothing will bring him back.
Clues left along the way
that said soon he would be leaving us.
People pray.
They look so sad.
But nothing brings him back.
A cold body
sends shivers down your spine.
Relaxed but then tense.
Yes, he is dead.
But he died peacefully,
in his favorite spot.
But not with us.
We were gone.
No idea that when we got back,
he would be gone.
Never knowing
that at any moment it could be the end.
And he’s never coming back.
