Dust

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In
this week’s Young Writers Project piece, Maggie Sullivan, a senior at
Milton High School, speaks as a write, wanting to be hear,
coping with the silence of sometimes feeling invisible.

For more great student writing go to youngwritersproject.org

Exposure
can be confining in only the most complex sort of way.

I
can hold my breath and count to ten and hope the crowd has disappeared before I
open my eyes again. But I can also clench my fists until my nails dig in, oh so
very deep until I feel them biting the flesh. Soft, white blood dripping from
my veins. So pure and beautiful in only the most delicate sort of way.

Invisibility,
is what it is, how the room can be full and yet you are still always the only
one. You talk and talk and talk until you have to scream because no one knows
that they’re supposed to listen. And even then, in the lull of the night, I
wonder, does the silence ever even feel just a tiny bit right?

Destroying,
is what it is. Demolition and destruction and degrading demise. We start off
with something so beautiful, but it only snowballs into this tiny piece of dust
on the dirty windowsill, old with grime from the paws of cats’ feet and
pomegranate seltzer cans and broken finger nails, tap-tap-tapping a rhythm no
one else seems to know.

And
George Orwell did not purposely use the word "dust" x amount of times
in glorious 1984 – George Orwell did not intentionally write all these
details and symbols and motifs for us to follow. Because when you write, you
hold onto this image – this feeling – this premonition in your gut. You take it
and you hold it until you grab a pen and the words come flying out. Sometimes
they don’t make sense and sometimes they’re not always right. But then you
write and you write until everything finally is right. Inside. You write until it’s alright inside.

And
this paper is exposing me to this big scary world; this scribbled piece of
lined paper puts me out there for the entire world to comprehend.

Now
all I have to do is remember to stay inside these tiny little margined lines –
stay in the lines despite all these words that are dripping from my veins in
the whitest blood that you ever did see.

Invisibility,
is what it is, and sometimes even when you’re in that crowd of screaming faces,
the dust is the only thing that will remain.

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