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: For my older sister
Difficult goodbyes aren’t reserved for empty nesters alone when a child first leaves home for college; they’re felt by siblings too, when the nest is still half full. This week’s featured poet, Max Wilson of Windsor, laments the end of an era with a sister who is sorely missed.
For my older sister
Max Wilson, 17, Windsor
You were brisk with your walking,
ignoring Oregon and all unsaid.
Before the goodbye,
I fell behind, admiring a slug,
knelt to let it crawl across my palm.
I imagined your toys,
dusty, in our attic of ancient things.
Your next hike was without me ,
for my stomach was slurring with slugs.
Alone, I lay in the van
and felt the slime inside me.
I should’ve asked you to stay.
Remember when we freed photos from magazines?
And taped models’ faces to the van walls?
It was our renovation, decorations.
When you could drive, we’d live in here.
If I begged you to stay,
we could play pretend,
be vagabonds;
all we’d need to know is the road.
We’d empty out the college textbooks
and use your bag as a boat,
floating forever
on the sea that sank time.