Erin Bundock, a rising junior at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, wrote this piece as a sophomore during Young Writers Project’s Vermont Writes Day. She was writing in response to the prompt, "Alive: Describe a place where you feel most alive." This piece will be published in Young Writers Project’s new Anthology 6, which will be released in September.
Champagne
By Erin Bundock
Grade 11, Champlain Valley Union High School
I find myself looking through
the rose filter from my
Minolta film camera.
He’s clutching a piece of glass
from a cracked
champagne bottle.
A fissure in its misted surface
moors itself to his thumb,
which is coarse
but fits perfectly
when we hold hands.
His hair catches fire in my lens,
his eyes stark in contrast
to the red hue I have
placed here.
He skims the glass onto
the crests of the white caps
as they roll and break
at his toes.
A fissure runs in his thumbprint,
and he tends to sink,
just as I tend to stay
with the sand below
waves.
But when we are both
above the crests,
with a rose-colored
lens,
I call those the alive
sort of days.
Learn more about the Young Writers Project's Summer of Stories challenge.
