To Youth

By Huang Yinglin, Class 1, Junior One, Shunde No.1 Middle School Experimental School, Shunde District, Foshan, Guangdong

The summer sun shines into my window once more — another summer has come. Again I hear so many voices calling at graduation, and the longing hidden deep in my heart for so long stirs: longing for the classmates who accompanied me for six years, and for those tender young faces just stepping into adolescence. Watching the sunlight, hearing the cicadas, I cannot help but think of one word — youth.

Youth may be running madly on the playground, then falling spectacularly, timidly getting up, and running again. Yet youth may also be one relentless farewell and goodbye after another. When I received my primary school diploma, my thoughts flew off I know not where — perhaps into the hearts of those forty-nine classmates, perhaps into the azure sky. "Stop thinking about it — in a month you'll be a junior high student!" I told myself. But as I watched those familiar figures, my classmates growing from childish to mature, my tears kept surging. In that moment there was only reluctance to part. Memories piled mountain-high: your presence was like a spoonful of sugar added to my life — nothing dazzling, but all the more grounding. Only then did I understand that meeting you all wrote a poem of my youth. When we took the graduation photo, my awareness flashed alight together with the flashbulb: your graceful images stayed on the negative, and at the same time were branded deep into my heart.

Perhaps graduation is only a turning point of youth. No more babyish voices, no more carefree, unguarded laughter; in their place come hoarse, high-pitched sounds and a gloomy heart full of cares; no longer yearning for the crowded, noisy city, but wanting only a quiet space of one's own. This is the metamorphosis of youth.

I still remember that innocent, adorable self of mine, always wishing half the time away, living only that one-half, wanting time to hurry, and to hurry faster. Then one day, without my knowing when, I never returned to that lively, familiar primary school campus, and only then found that youth had been playing hide-and-seek with us. Belatedly I understood: youth is the place you still want to return to after graduation. When I finished primary school, I always thought I was leaving hell — I never imagined I was leaving heaven.

To youth — youth is like a stranger to me, coming in a hurry, leaving in a hurry, turning the sun into the moon, the day into night. It cannot be caught like the wind, nor grasped like a shadow, yet it reshapes my body and soul. Time is an earnest scavenger: what it gathers up is more than the years — it is the callow youth at our fingertips and that unknown rebirth.

Youth is a book that, once opened, cannot be closed; life is a road that, once taken, cannot be retraced. Everyone has a youth of their own — it may not shake heaven and earth, but it will surely move the heart deeply. Cherish it as you go — to youth.

(Supervising teacher: Yi Zhengbing)