[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.
Dreams are funny things. Some people, even psychologists, claim they are formed by the subconscious mind as it processes our experiences and emotions – and others hold no stock in these fantastical movie reels whatsoever. Shelburne writer Cate Buley scrutinizes her own reoccurring nightmare this week, revolving around the very real-life themes of inadequacy and guilt.
A Dream of Broken Promises
By Cate Buley, 13
[T]hey say that when we dream, it’s caused by slow brain waves creating narratives that are a mixture of the day’s events and our imaginations – that these fancy images, designed for mental recovery, are of our own creation. But if that is true, somebody tell me why every time my head falls to its pillow and my eyes flutter shut, I see it. And tell me why every time I wake up, my mind is full of memories of something that never was.
I see an old, run-down wooden shelter, held together by a few nails and planks of wood, glowing in golden afternoon light. I see long, silky grass and soaring mountains off in the distance. I am confused, always confused, for this is a place I know not; I have never set foot on the ground there.
But what I really need to know is who they are… and who they are, to me. I hear their voices over the sound of the wind in the trees and the scurrying of small creatures. It comes smoothly and softly, but seemingly broken, just slightly.
“You promised. You broke your promise. You promised me,” they repeat over and over, almost chant-like.
Then they appear in front of me, walking toward me while I am frozen in place. Their hair is a honey brown and they have bright, startling gray eyes. They are dressed in simple white tees and light jeans, rolled up at the ankles. Their feet are bare, covered in a light, dusty layer of dirt. They stop in front of me, maybe three feet or so away, and look up to meet my gaze.
“You promised.”
