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Prompt: Thingamabob. Write a love letter or poem to an object.

To Pen, From Journal

My Dearest Pen,

How I long for your sweet touch once more. It has been days, weeks, years, since I have been cracked open, since I have felt words fall from the mind and onto my pages through you. I see you. Every day I see you sitting on the desk, closed. And every day I hope for you to be picked up and opened, and I hope the same for myself. I am surrounded by others: a photo album, The Catcher in the Rye, The Book of Poems, and more beyond that. But I have never felt so alone. I can feel my blank pages drying, withering in the absence of you.

I remember that day I met you. Confused and scared, I was opened, but you were there, reassuring me that this was what I was made for, that we were a team, forever working to create something beautiful. And I am always sorry when you grow tired, and we part once more. But I can trust you, unlike anyone else, to always return. There is always a story, too wonderful to go untold, that you hasten to record on my pages. I long once more for your passion, your intensity and your grace. I long to watch your stories unfold, to be swept away to places I can only dream of.

My dearest, please return soon. Tell me something good, something beautiful. Something small, that no one else noticed. Hide stories away in my pages, and I will treasure them and only share to those curious enough to crack my spine.

I have nearly forgotten what it feels like to be loved by you. But I feel the last words you wrote on my pages where the ink has pressed in and left an indent on the opposite side. You left a promise on these pages, a promise to return to me, a promise that this story would not end in that last sentence, that it would go on and on until I was all filled up to the very last blank page.

I think of you. As the candle is blown out, and another day goes by, I think of you. And I pray you return to me, complete me. For without you, I will never know peace.

Yours forever,

The Brown Leather Journal

Read the complete piece at https://youngwritersproject.org/node/13434

Light of My Life

In the middle of the night,

​when I'm tired and disoriented,

​when I need to see in the dark,

​I turn to you.

​During the long winter days,

​when the days are dim and long,

​and light is all I need,

I turn you on.

Without you, my life would be dim,

dark,

​blank.

​So thank you, bedside lamp;

​thank you, ceiling light,

​for all you do,

​and everything you reveal.

Mystery

The thing that I adore is something of a mystery to me,

for I do not know how it is created or why, but I love it.

When I run my thumb over its smooth surface,

I relax into a state where my rude and penetrating thoughts cannot find me.

As I see the subtle cracks in its surface, as I feel the rounded-off edges, I feel myself melt into a puddle,

with my brain working tirelessly to keep me focused as it lets out a silent cry to regain my attention.

As I sit staring at its long ignored cracks and crevices, I begin to wonder how it got that way,

and how it traveled into my hand at this exact moment.

This thing that I think about so much, that helps me in so many ways,

is sea glass, and it is one of my mysteries of the universe.

Vermont Writes Day

Below are more responses the Young Writers Project received on Vermont Writes Day, Feb. 10.

Pickle: Include the following words in a story or poem: callous, pickle, spell, snail, firefighter.

Pickle Plant Fire

There was a fire at the Pickle Plant. Paul Prince's Prized Pickles Co., went down in flames. It started in the jar room, where each and every one of the pickles was put in a glass jar with seven other pickles that once shared the same cucumber plant back in June, before they were harvested and sent to Paul Prince's Prized Pickles Co. All the workers got out safely.

As the plant manager, Paul Prince's nephew, called the fire department, the fire spread to the rest of the plant. The workers ran out of the building, their hands sweaty from the heat. They got even sweatier when the workers ran out of the building into 100-degree weather. The calloused hands from all that pickle work were put in front of their owners’ faces, to hide the tears.

When the firefighters arrived, they took turns fighting the inferno, and then had to rest a spell because of the heat and danger of the job. Progress moved at a snail's pace but slowly the fire was subdued. The workers and firefighters were all safe. The pickles did not last through the pickle fire.

Fire in the Dollhouse

Her hands gripped the pickle. She was stressed. An entire family depended on her in this moment.

She was a trained firefighter. The little plastic house, set in the center of the rug in the center of the living room, was burning.

The wooden people inside were in a chaotic frenzy.

She had stolen a lighter from her father, and she had stolen lighter fluid from the shed. After trying a few magic spells, the dollhouse finally caught. It snailed along at first, but now the walls of the house began to drip colored drops.

Not a moment too late, she squirted the juices from the pickle. She had stolen it from the fridge. Calloused hands gripped her head and pulled her away.

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