Young Writers Project is a creative online community of teen writers, photographers and artists, which has been based in Vermont since 2006. Each week, VTDigger features the writing and art of young Vermonters who publish their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for 12- to 18-year-olds. To find out more, visit youngwritersproject.org, or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org and 802-324-9538.
There’s an unhappy irony in what research on happiness tells us: The more value we place on our own contentment, the less we seem to experience it. This week’s featured poet, Elise Cournoyer of Richmond, compares attempting to capture joy to catching a greased insect. But maybe, she suggests too, if we can learn to practice a little patience, those butterflies of bliss will naturally flit their way back to us.
Happiness
By Elise Cournoyer, 14, of Richmond
I have come to realize that the most tender thing is not pain, but happiness.
So random, so elusive, an intangible wisp in the void.
I can’t control how long it stays, before it
leaves, like the foggy residue of a dream in the morning.
Reaching, grasping onto it
but not quite. The more you think it,
overthink it, the faster it slips away, away, away.
Lana Del Rey was right. It’s a butterfly,
impossible to catch with all that elbow grease and a grimace,
but maybe if you stop trying, maybe if you
hold your hand out and let the expectations fall away,
it’ll land on your tender
finger for a few seconds longer than the
last.
