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.
Hide and Seek
By Sophia Cannizzaro
[I] want to know you but
you are hidden behind clouds of smoke,
buried under a thousand identical Genesee cans,
rolled up in a joint which has just been lit by
the hands of the universe.
It breathes you in and as you disappear,
everything becomes dull.
I can’t find you for the most part, but sometimes
the dust behind the train settles and you are just standing there,
so confused by the fact that it didn’t hit you.
You are always beautiful but it is a particularly real beauty in
these unadjusted, unmodified moments. I archive the images in
my permanent memorial
dedicated to you,
and they keep the links in the chain
running from my heart to your ankle
Solid.
