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.
The genuine beauty of dreams
Maelyn Slavik, 15, Burlington
Our world is filled with such
delicate things, such
beautiful little lights we
find glittering in our eyes and
try to tuck
into pages of torn-out notebook paper that we
fold into our pockets and the creases
of our palms.
There’s a boy in my grade who
plays the piano so beautifully, whose
fingers dance across the keys, and
you can tell each careful note flows
with the dreams of his heart and as
a labor of love, one
that flows so smoothly, even though
he probably stumbled at first.
It doesn’t sound like it, though, as
he plays a song, so sweetly, for
a group of girls to dance to, the
sparkling wings of their act fanned out
around their shoulders, slow and
graceful and
absolutely beautiful.
In our show is another boy, an
actor and singer whose accent
makes his words all the prettier, and
who once told us all to thank
one another
for the kindness that lingers
all around us; he
smiles so genuinely, and
you can see his dreams as they shimmer
all around him.
Those dreams (of
the piano and the firefly wings, and
of the boy who carries stars
everywhere he goes)
are ones I’ll fold over and over and
over into tissue paper whose creases
mirror the ones on my palms.
