stream of teen spirit

exercise #8

Something lost.  Something found.

Write.

the strangest of places (exercise #8)

Happiness can sometimes be found in the strangest of places.

I get on the bus, as we start off from the common class.

I sit in the last seat, that fake blue leather slightly rough against my hands.

There's noise all around me, people talking about how fun the class was

even if it was for something stupid like Shakespeare.

Are moments like this normal?

The bus rocks back and forth, moving, as the temperature

rises lightly from the 30 plus kids all being stuck on a regular school bus.

Comfort can be found in the strangest of places.

Why is it that someone can be the most comfortable

around almost perfect strangers?

For a while, everyone simply talks, until Brittany, one

of the drama department darlings, says we should tell our

worst and best memories to each other.

Before this, I'd always found her kind of stuck-up.  I guess we really weren't so different.

Friendships can be forged in the strangest of places.

As the freshman talked on, oblivious, those of us in the back told each other things we promised we would keep, and bonded with people we may never have bonded with before.

A sanctuary can be found in the strangest of places.

As the bus arrives at the school, we all stepped out from comfortably warm into the cool night air.  Even as I walk to my Dad's car, that strange but wonderful feeling of being apart of something never left.

Even wonder can come from the strangest of places.

~ dylan kazmierowicztrimm , 17, (chatham, ny)

found (exercise # 8)

I’m walking through this marsh, everything is so green.  I turn the corner and there’s this cave.  I go inside and look around; there are carvings on the rock walls.  I keep going through this sort of dark tunnel.  I see my mom.  I ask her why she neglected me.  “Why was I neglected?”  She gives me this beautiful box and inside there are two beautiful wrapped things.  One is a beautiful heart shaped rock, the other remains wrapped.  But why?  Why is it still wrapped?  I just can’t seem to unwrap it.  My heart is beating so fast and I feel this sense of confusion and worry.  Sadness whips over me and I finally get to the gift – it’s a locket with a picture of my mom.  She says this is a tool for you.  When you need me, I will be close to your heart.  I will always be there and whenever you need me or need to talk, I’m right there next to your heart.  Even if you don’t hear a response to your question or the words to comfort you, just remember I’m always listening and always next to your heart.  Then she vanished and I’m standing there, just standing there.

~ chelsea denyou, 18, (bellows falls, vt)

found (exercise # 8)

I’m standing in a field. It’s a warm day. The sky is gray with unspoken promise of a storm. The grass dances with excitement. I see a path. I follow it into a forest. I hear the chirp of a woodpecker quickly making a shelter from the impending storm.  The forest grows deeper and darker with every step. I round a corner there I see it - a cottage, small and dimly lit. I walk to it and go inside. It smells of cigarettes and musk - offensive and inviting at the same time. I hear a creak - neither hostile nor dangerous; a calm and constant creak. The creak of an old rocking chair. And I realize I am not alone…through the dim light I make out the figure of an old man. The light refracts off the lenses of his eyeglasses. It’s my grandfather.

“Grandpa!” I shout. He smiles and says “Hello Hoover” My face glistens with tears of joy as I come face to face with for the first time since his death. I don’t know how long we hugged but it felt like forever.

He tells me he has a gift for me and reaches into his pocket and pulls out a black box. I open the box and inside is a key and a smaller box which I open with the key.  Inside is a compass, his compass. Inside the compass lid is a photo of him holding me as baby. Engraved in the compass are the words, I will always love you and I will always be there. As I wipe the streaming tears from my face I look up and he is gone.

~ greg muzzey, 17, (bellows falls, vt)

 

lost (exercise # 8)

I lost the easiness of family.
I lost the closeness of a brother who sleeps right down the hall.
I lost the longing for privacy when it was finally mine.  

I was born last, into a rival of teenagers in all their glory
Into my mother’s arms, who held four before.
Into a marriage that wasn’t between my mother and father.
I was born last.  

That is until my brother was born.  

I lost the littleness, innocence and attention.
That was when I was four.
The eldest siblings moved out when I was fourteen, all four of them.   In fourth grade I lost one glove.
One Burton snowboarding glove that could keep my hands warm on the most bitter of cold days.
I only lost one though. And it drove me crazy.  

For weeks I thought about the lone glove, wondered if someone had stolen it, and why they would only take one.

I romanticized that some unknown person took and now I was forever connected to them. Glove buddies.  

I interrogated people in my class, mostly at recess when I had to wear my sister’s hand-me-down mittens. No one admitted to the theft. I probably dropped it somewhere and didn’t notice.  

I do thoughtless things like that often.  

In that same fourth grade class was this boy, Zac.  

I lost him.  

Not when I switched schools and didn’t keep in touch.

Not in Shaw’s when I saw him and didn’t say hello.

I lost him two years ago, when he killed himself.

Maybe it’s selfish to claim him as my own loss since we weren’t good friends, merely classmates.

I believe he was my number one suspect in the glove robbery.  

But I felt the loss, I felt him gone, and when I went back to that church, where we went weekly, back at Holy Family, where we went to school together, I could see the loss.  

I saw his mom, his father and his two younger sisters.

I saw them cry, and I cried. I saw their sorrow, and I felt it.  

I wondered how they would go on to live their lives,

How they found a babysitter when Zac could no longer come home right after school to watch the girls.

I wonder if they held onto guilt, when all you can really do is set it free.  

I wanted to go sit next to his younger sister and tell her a joke, anything to make her giggle.

She looked so uncomfortable.  

She was four when Zac died.

I was four when my brother was born.

~ rachel h., 16, (bellows falls, vt)