Why do you write so much, when you are so young? What does it matter? by Ashley Headrick (15, Washington)

They ask me why I write; I answer that language is the firmity of man. 

When we uncover the buried remains of some neolithic society, 
Do we know how they lived? 
We see, of course, the means by which they stayed alive. 
We see their weapons, how they hunted; 
Perhaps we see the marks of disease upon their bones, 
The scraping of clay into the walls of a hut. 

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But we do not see how they lived. 
We know nothing of the stories they told to their children by a glowing fire, We know nothing of the tales of heroism and scandal they whisper to neighbors. We know not their laws, 
Their governance, 
Their religion, their gods.
 
What is mankind if not weak and effervescent when not tethered by the bind of language which keeps it afloat? 
If we do not record our thoughts, our truths, our lies, our stories, our laws, Then, in the great tide of history, we are not men at all. We did not live. 
We are merely arrowheads, and broken pottery, 
And monoliths that scar the countryside. 

Mankind lives on only in what we pass to the future. 
​
We live only in language.