[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
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, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Learning to be alone with your thoughts can rightly be characterized as a life skill that even many adults do not possess. The mind can be a frightening place to enter unaccompanied, but just as often it can be a happy home and refuge. In “The Roof,” Burlington student Juni Cleary reflects on the appreciation she has for her own company one night while watching the sun set from atop her garage roof. With more than a touch of snark, she conveys the necessity of simple moments such as these – untainted by dull conversations and the pressures of the day – for the growth of her imagination and sense of self.
The roof
By Juni Cleary
[I] watch
as the sunlight dips
behind the greenish-gold mountains,
and try to ignore
the responsibilities tugging
in the back of my mind.
I am hypnotized
by the roof of my garage,
but I am not looking at it.
I am staring at it without meaning.
I am not looking at the roof.
I am just resting my eyes
on a not-too-bright,
mesmerizing surface,
dotted with bumps.
I am thinking.
When I think
deep thoughts,
like what will happen when I die,
or what will happen
when the sun explodes,
it is best not to bother me.
I will not listen,
because I’m drowning in my mind.
Please do not save me.
I watch
as darkness creeps over the garage.
It is not a bad darkness,
but a reminder kind of darkness:
a go-inside-it’s-getting-dark
type of darkness.
But I do not listen to the lack of light
creeping over the garage.
Because
I am thinking.
And therefore –
darkness does not bother me.
When I think
lighter thoughts,
like if I could live on Mars,
or what homework is due tomorrow,
it is best not to bother me then, either.
For I will not listen to you –
I am thinking.
Let me be free.
