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.
Eventually (and it doesn’t take long), years begin to pass us by in the blink of an eye, but when we’re young – and school is out for the summer – time never seems to somersault so unpredictably. This week’s featured poet, Scarlett Cannizzaro of Essex, reflects on the responsibility of managing her own schedule when somehow every languorous dog day is next followed by a chaotically active one.
Everything and Nothing
By Scarlett Cannizzaro, 14, of Essex
Days are endless,
they are endless
pieces of time
that are organized
into hours,
minutes,
seconds.
Most wake up
in the morning.
We eat at noon,
we go to sleep
when the sky
is dark.
We have a schedule
for school,
for work.
But what happens
when there is no
schedule anymore?
For a student,
what happens when
summer arrives?
Do we manage our time,
our actions?
Do we wait
for something
different to happen?
Or do the days become
one day,
do the colors of each defining hour,
each defining minute,
blend?
In summer,
we don’t know when it’s time to sleep,
we don’t know what the date is without a calendar,
we don’t know what
to do
when there is nothing
to
do.
Each hour passes by at a differing pace,
sometimes leaving you waiting and waiting,
other times
leaving you grasping at the time you hope comes circling back.
I can’t define summer as one thing,
because I never know what to expect.
I never know if a day will be packed,
crammed
with things to do,
like it is on a typical school night,
or if a day will just be a day,
strolling past me
without a glance.
So the only thing I’ll say
when defining summer
is that it is the epitome of the word “anything” —
everything and nothing,
all at once.
