Young Writers Society

girls like boys who like parties

i had a streamer in my mouth when the call came
we found your son's body by the river
knelt by the phone when the answering machine picked up
defensive wounds, bruises and contusions
it was a quantum bubble, the way i tell my therapist
please come to the station
he was only a boy, only my

Never Said it Back

I said - didn't have to
say it like it meant something;
only open the mouth
like the tongue does not rub always
against the roof of the mouth,
close the eyes
as though for a moment,
and not the withering lifetime.
It didn't have to mean everything,
only it did.

sideswipe -- years and years ago it feels

the screen of my telephone is shattered / i am
small... stuttering... shattered

pushing my tongue long across the wood table
and hoping for splinters // cleaned with bleach

i tear antennae off of ants and pile the palm of my hand
glass on beaches...

the head of a cat and a spinal cord / where am i? --
when my mother calls "breakfast" i de-corpo-rate

a room spinning for 24 hours completes an orbit in 365.25 days

i wonder in calculus class
room 217B whether
i've written more notes on paper
or on my legs
i swore so hard that
anger and
loss would not drive me
to this point but
little
did i know how strong
are anger's arms
i think while the ink runs dry
that once upon a time
in a far away land
a girl's name was erica
and she was
beautiful

I wonder about the smooth kevlar
of your chest - how armoured you are
against this world, though I know it not
as a place of thorns and spite.

Think of the way your hands catch
at falling waves and ripples, like claws
screaming through skin and bone;
you were so enthused by the thought
of ending the simple repeat
of a mistake.

I wonder about you,
and the way I always thought
you were okay.

swing low, sparrow

i could
hold my eyes
so very slightly open
and listen to the scent of your breath
without cease.

you make me hunger
like the storm approaching shore;
smile for the flash bulb.

today i sat in my honda,
watched from down the street as a man,
scrawny, tawny, crawled out of your window
holding a photo of me.

hold my hand tightly;
let go only if we part ways.
this is how i'm brave.

the line between truth and fantasy (thin as ice)

breathe now
because the trees will not breathe
for you. it is midnight and we are wandering souls
burning from our cores in brand new lights.
i reach for your smoldering hue,
i stretch until my arms are frozen;
but this, i find, is true:
your light is a reflection of my own.

Details

It is later that I remember
the water clinging to my knees
in that awful pond.

Only it wasn't awful and the gritty
shore felt smooth against my toes.
Throwing one shoe into the waves,
we laughed as the ripples moved
right over out feet.

It was later that I remembered
you were with me.