“On the Rock,” by Amelia Van Driesche, 19, of Burlington. Young Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersp roject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at [email protected]; (802) 324-9538. Wild Things Sela Morgenstein Fuerst, 13, South Burlington Every spring, we throw ourselves unceremoniously into the birthing world, abandon all remnants of the cold dark snow. We are sun-drunk and terribly deprived.  We give little shrieks of joy  when the croci appear at the edge of the woods, much as we did when the snowflakes first began to fall, the cyclical nature of the world giving us just enough time to forget. We race each other out the school doors, tumbling out onto the bright pavement in our haste to be the first one to see the clear, blue sky. Our jackets lie abandoned on their hooks. The sun is out; we are once again wild things. And everyone else in the state, it seems, has had the same thought — the sidewalks are blooming with children who stare awestruck at the petals sprouting in the concrete cracks, elders sit on porches and wave hello to every sort of creature passing by. The earth smells of gladness  and rain. The birdsong in the trees is incessant; crows seem to float in the space between the trees and the wispy, white clouds; the deep, sweet freshness of the new-made air leaves us tipsy at street corners, gulping and desperate for more.  A poet kneels in the grass in her Rollerblades, palms up to the bright, bright sky. She knows the day is ending. She drinks in, endlessly, the impermanence of warmth. The breeze is shifting, bringing cooler scents to the horizon, slowing, carrying with it always the unwanted passage of time. But for now, it is sunny, and beautiful, and blue, and as it is every spring, there will be another day. Read the story on VTDigger here: Young Writers Project: ‘Wild Things’. ...read more read less