Young Writers Society

there isnt enough sand in the desert to grate away your rough edges
i tried to ignore them to hold you close but they just cut my hands
i tried to get by with pretending you were an art peice
that i didnt understand how to grasp

i think after everything ive experienced trying to love you
you are just a danger a rusty octagon of knives
i wouldnt personally leave you out around children
i fear you would cut dark grooves into their minds
if they ever accidentally fall into your arms

i was told you were a statue of a man
a valiant leader and a beautiful soul
a harmless broken thing

but your investment in seeing me bleed
has governed me that you are unsafe
to sheild others from your hate

your strong slender fingers
are draped over the banister
pale hands that could envelope the world
as water runs in ribbons down your palms
dripping on the marble staircase

i always find you here; watching me
when i care to look for you
you reside princely in the side
of my mind palace that i tried to flood
to purge clandestine thoughts of you

and yet you never once wavered
despite the tide; i still find you here
wandering the marble halls
singing a siren song
i could never quite drown out

there isn't enough salt in the ocean
to make sense of how your presence chokes me
from your mouth come sounds
that invoke such a deep silence
all i can hear is the dripping
from your skin as the water drains

dancing down the stairwell
rushing past you
into a new rock bottom
that i will make so homely
i forget i'm underground

looking for you feels like
raking my teeth against your wrists
until i can taste the ocean
and drowning myself in your wet hair
and kissing lips that i know
won't ever kiss me back

forgetting you feels like i'm
laying down in the wet sand
beside the tiger sharks
and letting my lungs
fill with algae

my body is already
a terrarium of foreign feelings
and unfamiliar voices
what's a few more life forms
maybe they can fill the space
that you never left

drowning is supposed to be painful
but living below sea level hurts more
the weight of loving you will crush me
but i'm still falling into sea trenches
the convection vents burn brightly
a false sun; and i boil with longing

only single celled organisms
can live here indefinitely
extremophiles

i'll live surrounded by darkness
as long as there is a little light and warmth
you could ask if i'm drowning but you won't
when we met i forgot how to breathe
and you didn't seem to mind

i'll outlive everything
except the salty ghost of you
and your handprints on my skin

you press heart shaped lips against the bleeding skin of my busted knuckles, that is your love.

and you tear into my kiss with beautiful crooked teeth that cut like glass, that is your love.

i can't reach the first aid kit before you gut me.

when we touch you stain my skin dark scarlet. but god help me i've memorized the way your left canine sits and the half chipped tooth beside it.

and i've memorized how it feels to be stabbed in the ankle running away from your touch only to fall into you again.

nothing grows more quickly than your tall broad shouldered shadow. you box me in until i am encircled in your slender arms.

you are a man you are my shield you are my lover, but sometimes you are my father, and you are my enemy, and you are thunder, and you are a tornado, and you are a tsunami, and you are fire.

and you destroy everything
that i've ever built.

afterwards you turn to smoke and
i sit alone in the ashes
and you are nothing.

when i hear your voice i tense
because i know i'm in danger
and when i don't hear it
i fear i may.

you are unpredictable
and difficult to cage.

you make me wish i was in a rubber room
with a straight jacket and a muzzle,
but the only person you'll ever touch is me
because i cannot let you go.

you are volatile
you are mine.

your hands dance across my shoulders roughly.
your fingers splay across my spine
and i feel strong.

you are my inner strength.
you are my fighting chance.
you are magnificent
you are controlled.


you make me feel alive
you are bitter.

you are real.

the coffee beside me
that i made in a rush
has sat quietly for two hours
the assignment i'm trying to do
has seen barely a click
the rampage inside of me
is making me sick
the temptress anxiety
she sits and she sits
on top of my chest
as pretty as red brick
the glassware depression
it shines in my teeth
i'm always cleaning it gently
waxing it as it makes me bleed
i tried to eat the glass pitcher
because it held more than i could ever have
jealousy is like a papercut over an artery
it takes everything from you
and you can't miss what you had
because you're too busy burning alive
and bleeding out

i think the reason im always so full
is that i eat my anger
in discordant fistfuls

harsh words unsaid
never hurt anyone
until its all they are

if shading is what light dictates
then you could color me darkly
and paint around me in white

i only give what i wish i had
and receive what i dislike

im a boy internally covered in ink
its spread over my skin
but only i can see it
i did them in my mind
felt the needles hit
felt the ink seep in
but i have alabaster skin
and the tattoos are within
only seen in glimpses
in my head

after everything you remained the same
a constant color scheme engrained in my brain
and if we spoke i think i know what you'd say
you'd pretend that this wasn't a game

you've remained the same
but i've changed

wiser to your triicks
i've gained a brain
but you haven't changed

to you it's still a game

i no longer play

i hate that you're the same

i am uncomfortable in my skin
and sometimes i try to cut myself out of it
but its not a mold and im not hidden anywhere inside
i will have to cut and snip and sew and heal
and morph and change and grow
and cry because it hurts so much
and cry because it costs so much
and cry because of how many people
who dont know me my story or my pain
will hate me for what i worked so hard to become
for being myself finally

will hate me for my days in bedrest
and the times at night when i didnt slit my wrists
and for the way i won my mental battles
they will hate me for being alive
for being different

and i will cry
but i will not give up
and i will know that cruelty
is given to me in bubblewrap
because i chose to live
because i chose to love myself
because i chose to change
because being what they wanted
would be being six feet underneath
the dirt they say im a part of

everytime i have looked in the mirror
and felt my stomach turn
i have heard you say
i like you better this way
dont change

everytime i thought about writing a suicide note
i heard you say that faggots dont deserve to live
that trannies are trying to hurt your kids
i heard you always
i hear you in my mind still

everytime i faltered you were there to make sure i fell
to try to kick me into hell
to try to undermine my health
and i heard you
but i never hurt you
because the hurtful things you said werent true
im just trying to be myself

if only you knew what your words could really do
how they dug into my ribs how i believed them to be true
i feel it still every time i remember how much i believed
my ribs still ache lacerated from how i was deceived

there is a pain behind my eyes a migraine i cannot hide
because i know you are disguised and people find you kind
we are all looking for spoons and you are made of knives
and i tried to eat with you how bloodily i dined

when faced with your call i should have declined
but my heart was too eager for love to arrive
so i shared with you how i felt inside and you watched
and said you understood with greedy eyes

everything i gave to you you used to get ahead
and after i was used up for all the helpful things i had
you turned your head how polite you were when you said
"you deal with object impermanence like a child"

as you retracted your entire presence from my life
upset that i feared you gone while you hid away
you could not give me any honesty even in the last days
it wasn't then but much later i found out it wasn't from you

i'm convinced only lies exit your mouth
you were a knife and i was a cutting board i didn't know
i thought i was lucky for it i hope you are glad you were adored
i hope you know that you made living feel like a chore

i hate myself because of how much i missed you
you were a knife and my trust was misused
i let you cut away my ribs thinking it was a hug
you tried to shred my heart to refuse but i survived

it wasn't because of you you weren't ever kind
i'm missing something just like the energy i can't replace
i'm missing the person that i was before i memorized your face
and my time it was never meant to belong to you it was mine

goodnight sweet boy

i'm sitting in silence almost amiably
i'm uneasy you are unhappy and you seem to be
i'm picking up peices of yourself you left with me
when we were talking and you were cutting yourself down
i wish you could put them back on its safe with me
i know you can't trust what you don't see in me
shrink shrink pretty boy but i won't forget your name
the tone of your voice or your smile
which i havent seen in a while

the guitar chords sing to me sullenly
as you play you say every day is the same
and you aren't sure why you came here
and you shrink a little more

and i hold you in the palm of my hand
wishing i knew how to give you back more
i'm unequipped to grow a seed of hope
in a world i haven't explored i wish i knew more
and you won't let me past the gates
so at the gates my love i pour

i know everything is sour
i still love you every hour
and i wish you a blissful night
with everything in my power
before i go to sleep

fig tree

broken branches that hate me so much
an unripe fruit with bones that crunch
seeds that won't grow
and wasper larvae burrowed in my guts
i'm simply a fig and that's all i can be
some people hate me and some love me
some say my brittle bones get stuck in their teeth
some like the sweet filling underneath
i'm the perfect host for things that sting
and bury themselves in between my ribs
consumable and green
i'm simply a fig in a gnarled tree
hoping i'm good enough for you to eat
that i'm not dubbed unclean
so i can be used for something

unchanging

sometimes i am amazed at how
frogs are still tadpoles; and how we never grow up
that our lives can be so lonely and so full of love
that giving someone nothing can change them so much
that hate is the other side of love

i know now why i'm drawn
to the guile and elegance
of the painful idiocy of the 1800's
back when women were property
and gay courtship was a shameful secret
when transitioning was something
that nearly took murder
and meticulous care to ensure safety
it was the biggest secret of all

in its harshness it didn't lie
about what was allowed of me
in its cruelty it was honest
unlike the world today

in it's sinful dishonesty and hidden nature
there was a raw defiance
in breaking a home for myself
into the shadows of society

when today is fake smiles painted over disgust
and false love letters written coded to say i hate you
i miss when biting your thumb at me was an insult
not a sign of anxiety i should look over

i miss the days of yore that weren't mine
when i could mix poison into my abusive parents wine
and the village would accept me as an orphan
and i could disappear and come back different
and no one would give a shit because the old me died

no one would expect me to have a birth certificate
and i could run away with the doctor's apprentice
and we could marry women that would have affairs
while we gently combed each other's hair

and i could be a bakers son and he could be my beloved one
and archeologists would find our scandalous letters of poetry
and tell everyone we were 'close friends'

but now with less freedom and glittery lies
about enlightenment fuck this
i'd rather have freely died of tuberculosis well lived
way back then

crackling with an electronic hum of emotions
i must be artificially intelligent and impressed upon
my thoughts are dead when walking
and my brains a static hum
everything i say comes out off
comes out wrong
every idea i generate seems to fall
fall fall fallen failed fall fall colors fall decorum
search entry 'why' _declined
we have found zero matching results

fade to black
let me have a dramatic exit
if you keep me here
if you keep testing me
i won't regret anything

i used to find crime scary
but with you it seems romantic
if my anger is authenticity
why should i correct it
if i must i'll return your energy
much worse than how you sent it

i used to shield you with my resolve
but that was before you bent it
i don't take kindly to prosecutors
who pick innocent victims
if i said something that scared you
rest assured i meant it

disparaging reputations
you think yourself a menace
you're unaware just how much energy
i've spent to keep clean hands
you still have teeth to eat with dear
and i still set the table
you just don't realize that you
really should be grateful

i'm usually the pleasant type
but darling you're just so hateful
i've memorized the steps to make
your dissapearance untraceable
yet you seem to think in ultimatums
laying blow after blow on my patience
i don't mean to seem unstable
but i'm really more than able
to correct your behavior

i don't want to be severe
but i would like to end it here
this pattern of back and forth
either stay and stain the carpet
or allow me to show you the door

much to my dissent i've discovered my limit
i cannot stay in this house with you within it
i don't look to be violent but it's within my power
and i don't care how far above me
you seem to think you tower

if i'm stuck your loving butler
and my place is the kitchen
turn away lest you be reminded
thats where all the knives are
that I can cut you down with

something is fractured
a numb throb folllows me as i walk
a porcupine is in my throat
it's time to lie down
maybe not forever
but long enough for this
coffin to dust over
so i can get away from you

i'm deaf to your tears
when i know you should be wailing
maybe after all these years
you got tired of waiting-
stopped expecting safety
locked away inside-
from harsh expectations
my inner child was
starved of inspiration

my biggest fear is
gears grinding in desperation
where is my intention
my whimsical ideation
peaceful inner child-
he died alone at nine
now i can't be creative
i'm running on steam
can no longer dream
grasping for a voice i can't hear

i'd give you a rose
but your grave is an empty casket
missing in action
you were only a boy
when they stole our joy
and i can't recreate it

because it's how i process my emotions,
fading to dust like weather worn pottery
i'm no archeologial find
no conclusions will be drawn from my end
there will be no 'how did he live'
only a brisk wind to whisk away whatevers leftover
i am a ceramic pot, a sandstone
i don't die i can't
i break and break until there's nothing left
i break and break until there's nothing else
i break and break until i lose myself

make me a singing bowl
crystal and light
let my noise soothe the ones around me
or let me make none at all
if you don't want to use me
break me on the cement
and let my fragmented noise
wish you a wonderful life
sweep away my shards
so my broken peices
don't make you unwhole