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.
“Ah… young love!” When we’re young, we’re miffed when older folks say it; when we’re older ourselves, we yearn for those simpler times. This week’s featured poet, Colchester-based Noah Carmona, writes of a newfound inner buoyancy and optimism tingling inside him, for life has suddenly begun to feel a little more colorful with a new, devoted partner by his side.
At last
By Noah Carmona, 16, of Colchester
My bloodshot eyes open up to the light.
My tired heart awakens, asking to sleep another night.
My fingers bend, feel all over the blanket that has cuddled my body,
but the blanket is not as warm as you are.
I stand up and let my heart come to a jog,
while the cold air from outside hits the lake water and forms a pleasant fog.
The showerhead cries down a stream of water and dampens my soft skin.
But the water is not as refreshing as you are.
I prepare my breakfast and eat like it is a chore.
Take the spoon to my mouth and make myself eat more.
The food? It’s actually not as bad today as it was before,
as it was in the days before I met you.
I walk outside and let the sun wash over my face and coax my hair.
The sun smiles even brighter and the daybreak brightens up my skin, how rare.
I feel my mouth creep into a smile and my eyes get as big as the moon in the night sky.
I shouldn’t be surprised; I started feeling this way the moment you embraced my eyes.
You make me feel a way my heart has not felt in a while, at last.
You make my monotone days somehow feel worthwhile, at last.
You show me the stars in the night skies that twinkle as brightly as your eyes, at last.
You grasp my eyes’ attention; now I feel like I can finally fly, at last.
At last, I feel.
At last, I feel something I haven’t felt in a while.
Whether or not you break my heart or tear apart my smile,
I know the journey I have with you will be worthwhile.
