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 contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Like we might say about daisies or French restaurants, there is something inherently charming in a clear, starry night sky. This week’s featured (prose) poet, Sam Aikman of Richmond, seizes inspiration from the great abyss above, and, through her dreamy narrator, whispers onto the page a string of would-be, monumental-miniature moments.
Ellipse
By Sam Aikman, 18, of Richmond
The record down the hall sounds like the static of space, drawn out and fading — as if a comet struck by, leaving a trail of sound in its wake. This is not a party, but if it were we’d tune the radio to Pluto and dance the night away to the sound of its loneliness.
We’d pretend to be in love with ourselves as much as the sky, the abyss, and all the space that’s eaten by time. I’d print out that photo of us from last fall: holding hands on the bridge, arms raised above our heads, traffic whizzing by. We’d color our eyes green and write the date wrong on the backs. We’d leave them on street corners and tape them to bathroom mirrors and wait for someone to find them and give them to little boys with dreams of becoming astronauts, or pilots, or men with dark glasses.
Afterward, I’d buy you a pink donut from the corner store, kiss the birthmark on your shoulder, and leave the car running. We’d be like Mars: red, and cold, and pretending.
