YWP: ‘Prove Me Wrong’

[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.

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.

Watching a pattern of physical or emotional abuse from the sidelines of a friend’s relationship can be as crushing as it is frustrating. At what point does it become necessary to intrude on their boundaries – and how do you make them see things from your perspective? Burlington poet Lila Woodard this week writes as if to a friend trapped in an unsafe situation, begging her to either part with the man mistreating her or somehow reassure her that her suspicions are unwarranted.

Prove Me Wrong

By Lila Woodard, 16

[I] pray that you prove me wrong.
I hate being wrong,
but what you have
behind your metallic smile
is stronger than my impulses
to always be proven correct.
Please, prove me wrong.
I do trust you, believe me, I do,
but it’s his soul that beat you black and blue…
Darling, he gave you that bruise upon your arm
and you let him bandage the marks
with a piece of scotch tape, so –
please, my love, know that it is not you. Know that it is him that I do not trust. And if I’m standing by you, dressed in dove-colored fabric as you approach him with tears on your plush cheeks, I will smile as you prove me wrong. I pray that you prove me wrong.