Young Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org; (802) 324-9538.
Beauty remains in the eye of the beholder, even when it comes to classic beauty itself: a summer sunset, a bloom in the breeze. How easily a graying sky or wilting flower can inspire one’s casual insouciance, another’s majestic song — and isn’t that a lovely thing? This week’s featured poet, Gretchen Wertlieb of South Burlington, writes an ode to the dried roses left to stand in their vase, long-dead and shriveled yet no less distinguished in their grandeur.
The blue glass vase
Gretchen Wertlieb, 15, South Burlington
Two plastic plants, a blue glass vase of dead flowers, and a cactus. The cactus is the only living thing left of the four, and lucky it is, for it gives me hope that I can at least keep that alive.
In the blue glass vase, there is a collection of white and red roses, all dead, all dried up. Back in the days of majesty, flowers had meaning beyond their beauty. Red roses symbolize a classic love, the kind you tolerate on Valentine’s Day — a bare minimum that rolls away like the red carpet, red as the blood your heart will spill, with that kind of love. White roses symbolize reverence, young love, and eternal loyalty — pledging yourself to someone you can only bow to, growing up only to realize promises can be broken.
But these flowers on my desk have died, shrunk in size, diminished in prize. Where one might see shriveled hearts of flowers, I see beauty in their new forms, for they have taken on new hues, and therefore new meaning. The red has deepened to a sweet-wine maroon, and the white to a velvet cream. Maroon roses take on a deep-rooted passion, a far cry from the superficial tenderness of the bright red. Unconscious beauties that know their worth, and are willing to wait. Cream-colored roses embody thoughtfulness, grace, and richness. Taking time to make your life worth living, not giving your whole self to things that deserve none.
These roses I keep in the blue glass vase on my desk are dead. They spent their lifetimes as white and red. How awful it must be to only show your true colors when you’re gone.
