In this week’s
Young Writers Project piece, Julia Hancock-Song, a ninth grader at Pacem
Learning Community in Montpelier, explores her past in a dreamlike sequence of images. For more great student writing go to youngwritersproject.org
I wander back along empty, dusty roads
past this time and that
past telephone wires
and hills and drive-through fast-food units
past a life that
re-begins in slow-motion
past an imposing
brick building
I wander through the
house
until I find the scar
on my cheek
and change my mind,
setting the
skin-toned makeup back down
on my mother’s
bathroom counter
unopened
I am not broken
it will not hide
never broken
I wander away from
the mirror
away from the past
and suddenly I’m
running
through bare, empty
rooms full of desks and chairs
all the same
all dark
all waiting
I’m running for the
stairs now
soundproof
expressly forbidden
and out
past the
coffin-shaped stone benches
past the sickly grass
up a side street that
quickly
becomes dusty and
deserted
under my feet
I run past
drive-through fast-food joints
past telephone wires
and hills and jukeboxes
past that time,
past this
I find a river
and a birch tree like
arms
and a kayak
and I slow down, but
keep moving
though I mark the
place in my mind
with a little note
for later-
I think that this is
the tree
I would like to be
enlightened under.