Young 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 email Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
YWP: Cinnamon
There’s a sense of solace in a steamy cup of coffee (or tea, if that’s your cup of tea) that can spread warmth through our limbs like a compassionate hug when we need it most. This week’s featured writer, prose poet Iris Robert of South Burlington, takes inspiration from the spices, flavors, and textures of a comforting sip to explore the complexities of love on her palate.
CINNAMON
By IRIS ROBERT, 17
Like vanilla bean freckles on your cinnamon hands, I followed the constellations left by saffron strands. I drank lattes every morning when you were gone. I measured the coffee grounds and poured steaming water over the parchment, frothed milk and let it slip into a mug. I sprinkled nutmeg on top, added a stripe of caramel, maybe. Honey or cardamom or sugar if I was feeling fancy.
I held those mugs so gently, placed them so lightly on the wooden nightstand. Like chamomile and rose petals steeped for hours, I stained myself with memories of you, of driving in the middle of the night, of reaching for the moonlight even when it disappeared behind the dense clouds. I let you have my leather jacket. I stuffed notes in the pockets and waited for you to unfurl them like roses, yet you never sent a reply.
I tell these stories to your ghost: the days when you were away, when the shadows came too quickly, when time and mugs fell from my hands as if I were made of feathers.
