Kit Fraser
School: Greenwich High School
Grade: 12
First year at YWI
It’s nice to have a place to focus solely on my writing. Being with a condensed group of writers my age is very encouraging. We’re all here to write and it’s easy to connect to people with that shared goal in mind. The conference groups are also helpful. My group has helped me improve my writing pieces and skills. I learned a lot about character building from YWI, and how to build a solid, appealing character. That greatly improves a piece of writing. I also learned that college food is not as excellent as one might assume.
Adie
She’s a master with words. I swear Adie could convince a cat it was a dog, and she would do it for fun too. When we were young we would hide beneath the patio awning, when the sun was high, around noon. The ants had the same idea as us. They crawled through the grooves of the brick floor, towards us and the cool shade. I remember being horrified, watching Adie pin the ants to the ground using clear scotch tape. Maybe that’s when I knew first; how cruel she could be, how unnecessarily mean. But we’re grown up now and her bitterness has sunk deeper. She’s learned to disguise it and control it. She tapes people now. She’s a master, I swear.
Listen to her voice. It becomes deep and curvy when she’s around the boys. Her words curl around their eyes, nose and waist, tickling senses they didn’t even know existed. She reels them in and lets them go with that voice. But you haven’t really heard it until you witness her around her father. Her throat opens to release a high pitched giggle. She always laughs around the old man. She knows it makes him happy. She’ll slip into his lap and softly whisper innocent, idle thoughts into his ear. I think to myself, “Christ, Adie. You’re practically eighteen.” But she’s such a girl and she has fun with these games.
Adie and I are old enough this year to join the discussions my parents hold in our living room every Wednesday. Other adults from the neighborhood come to talk about philosophy, politics and religion. The atmosphere is heavy with thought, and people cherish these gatherings, that indulge their desires to plunge into an unknown realm. But the circle of open minds holds a different opportunity for Adie. Every Wednesday is a challenge. This is where she tests herself and flexes her skills to capture a more prudent group. With these people she is careful, like she is with me. She knows the sort of people who can see past a strong voice. So here’s her approach. It’s very clever, and the technique reflects her amazing ability to control. She’ll begin to talk very slowly and very quietly. Her voice does not rise above a normal volume. Everyone hangs on each word, ready for the next. After a few sentences she pauses for a while, breathing deeply and crossing her legs into the lotus position. Adie’s gaze is unfocused and is generally directed upwards. This moment is crucial. She mustn’t smile or pop her gum. She must appear reflective and wise. She’s never failed yet. When she sums up the voice again it is not as soft. It is determined. Her words sweep them up and twist them around. She runs them around in circles.
It’s amazing; a miracle. The adults I admire and emulate are tangled in this girl’s voice. She drapes them with wisps of invisible glue. They’re stuck in her firm voice and steady gaze, not realizing there’s nothing behind it. The words are words. They’re not coherent or genuine. It’s a shame that such power is filled with such emptiness. Adie doesn’t know what to do with her talent for manipulation; she only knows her malice and spite, and the games she is sure she can win. She leaks meaninglessness into each person she meets.
When the discussion group finally disperses, Adie and I walk towards the park together. We’re silent for a while, and I wonder if she’s trying to figure out how to wrap her dark glow around me. Our conversation begins, slow and wary. It might be the first real exchange she’s had all day. We talk about things that don’t change, especially things Adie can’t change- like the shape of that cloud and the hardness of the sidewalk. Once we reach the park we sit in the shade, beneath an ancient tree. I rest my legs against a thick, winding root, and Adie sighs fiercely. I close my eyes and think of the sun that is inching towards us, shredding the cool shade that currently engulfs us. I contemplate the moment when Adie will be able to maneuver her voice through the spaces in my mind; the moment when she’ll fill me with her emptiness. But I’ll enjoy this moment now, and let her worry about that.
City Things
Look at Them stew in their troubles,
those City Things.
Closed systems, hard brick and steely thoughts
that’s what They are.
Their eyes cut through the thick air. Their jaws are tight with fear.
They are bitter with understanding.
They know the distance
between Them and the earth
Them and the truth
Them and the innate paths Their ancestors carved
which They cannot follow because it is not tangible.
The City has pinned Them.
A feeble weed breaks through the concrete surface.
“There’s one!” a City Thing cries
and she rips it out, covering the sliver of truth that remains with black tar.
She is paid to do such things,
to beautify the City.
It is a sickly process-
A desperate effort to smooth the City’s jaggedness.
But smooth sidewalks
Are smooth sidewalks.
The center is still rough and crooked.
Nature has been subdued to a background noise.
It’s been tidied up quite a bit.
The City is no place for a mess.
The grass is kept clean and short.
The flowers that once embellished lawns are grown in shallow clay pots,
sitting on balconies
and marble pedestals.
their roots cannot grip the foreign soil completely enough to truly bloom
and live as flowers should.
their existence is minimized to that of a decoration.
A bubble formed over the City some time ago.
Negative energy exudes from the polluted water,
ground,
air
and stifling cycle of thought, that never relieved itself
into a purer form.
All this is trapped beneath the bubble
and has been warped into a heavy smog.
The City Things can feel it press against Their skin
and twist around Their insides.
This dense air is definite,
like the City’s towers and walls.
These are the entities the City Things believe in;
no Gods
or dreams
or history.
Those ideas are like the mythical bubble.
they do not exist.
“We believe in our solid foundation,” the City Mayor says.
“We believe in our economy,
our politics,
our pollution.
That’s what we believe in.”
So the City Things walk with leaden feet,
Hard and heavy from such an unmovable foundation.
Young City Things roam the street.
They are a severed generation;
never knowing the true color of the sky.
The inherent balance sometimes stirs in the core of Them;
when They release the repressive air that fills Their lungs with each breath.
But the Young Things spew anger.
They are too new to accept the strong hold and permanence
of cleanliness, rules and sensibility.
With each juvenile there is a hope
That Their anger will turn to desire
And not to fear.
Anger is the tipping point.
So They roam,
looking for a way to fall towards the unknown
the stillness
and the natural order.
Sometimes the moonlight breaks through the haze,
And it feeds this search, for a fleeting moment.
Then the City presses on,
filling Their lungs with tremendously useless junk
once again.
But who’s to say one Young City Thing
did not fall towards the unusual
in that brief instant.
He’ll carry that memory of moonlight around
in His eyes.
And when the other Young Things see this difference in His gaze,
They’ll fall too,
until all the City Things have Their ears to the ground,
listening to the roots of trees grow beneath the concrete.
The Days Pass in Threes
These days
The days pass in threes.
Time slips through man’s weak grip
And the indentations of the past
Escape their usual grooves,
Flowing freely in chaos.
With furious eagerness,
We grind those two days missed
Into a word or phrase.
In our fractured minds we force those memories,
Both pleasant and uncomfortable,
Into the mold of such brief outlines.
Whole epiphanies are lost with this carelessness,
But three days are a day in this world.
So it must fit.
Some cherished breath,
A meaningful glance
And a spark of inspiration
Are erased from existence.
These minute details could not survive the speedy pace of earth
Or our fleeting observation.
Perhaps the essentials of our identities
Have fallen through the cracks
As our skeletons persist.
But the days pass in threes.
There are seventy-two hours between each sunrise,
And when the golden light breaks across the horizon
This orb of summaries will continue to spin
Faster
And faster
And faster.