Young Writers Society

week 16:

thoughts, and latenight talks
milktea beside the fire and you're sitting across me
eyes downcast, hands folded
'let's break up' you whisper
'ok' i said

'ok'

and for a while it was
i washed the sheets, stashed the photos in a box
i put two drops of honey in my teas and
on cloudy days, i'd go out in the backyard and try not to think about
the warmth of your hands on mine

i guess the thing with feelings is that
even long after the caster has left
it remains
like the after fragrance of a well boiled tea
curling onto itself in the thin air

line count: 16

week 17

we are here one second
then we are not.
we could be the fleeting blossoms of a sakura tree, the beauty encapsulated in brief moments
swept by the wind.
but most of the time we are the observers, standing below
tasting the change of seasons on our tongue

the clouds are brewing in the distance
and there is disrest marked in the way we wake up in the mornings
coffee stains and muffled alarms
drawn curtains and shuffled steps.
the horizon darkens, shadows overcasting light galavanizing
into fractures splintering the sky

we know that
every storm leaves a trail and we're always on the cusp
of where it leaves
and goes. thrown into a chaotic aftermath wondering how to reconstruct ourselves
from the ground up -
wanting stamp of its destruction to garner our doors, but yearning
for the smoothness of recovery.

line count:21

week 18:

adolescence/adularescence

18+ content
mild swearing


adolescence feels like this-

swinging downtown at midnight holding a bottle of brandy,
your lips are on fire, your lung fucking hates you
but the stars are blazing the brightest you've ever seen
and you feel like this is the best time to be alive

it's licking ice cream, then you discover the ice cream
are Turner's clocks melting the paint off your innards
but no one will ever understand you - since no one sees the paint
but every second the seams are bursting and you're too worn out to do anything
except watching them slowly fall apart

it's falling through autumn leaves,
feeling the grass embrace your body as gravity pulls you into an embrace
watching sunlight arch over your fingers, wind braiding your hair and the quiet serenity smiling through your lips

here, adolescence tosses you into uncharted waters
gives you a bar of 25cent chocolate as a yardstick for future navigation
but like the stupid 13 year old you are
you eat it within the first five seconds and later realises 'oh fuck, I shouldn't have done that'
every time you're thrown under water, eyes burning, throat restricting, you have to remind yourself there is land ahead
even if all you hear is the crashing sound of your own thoughts echoing inside the chamber of your head telling you you'll never make it

somedays, some kind stranger watching ashore will tell you 'there will be a day when you won't have to struggle anymore, honey'
but the truth is that there are 7 billion people on this planet, and whether you're on land, in water, being some ambigious edgy creature that is on land, in water and flying in the sky at the same time,
you will never stop struggling
because everyone needs air to survive.

here adolescence gifts you with something call, 'feeling every emotion feels like having sex for the first time' and just when you think you've had everything there is to offer
(but wait, there is always more)
because every emotion becomes divisible, spilling into diatomic partners engaged in a perpetual war yearning for affection, love, validation, affirmation
that, somehow watching a bird flying into the window you forgot to close triggers an
existential breakdown lasting longer than it should have, and now you're standing in the shower wondering why flying fish exist

it's watching dawn from twilight, lines pegged onto a sky
so familiar and foreign at the same time.
some days the score makes sense, other days it's a muted chainmail of sullen voices
murmuring in the depths of your dramatic, torn up soul

adolescence is that dickhead geography teacher you had in grade 8,
mapping becomes a lie when you reach the wrong destination and realise every path you thought would be right isn't
because it just isn't

you realise, sipping tea one weekend (when the inferno inside you has decided to abide and take its long-deserved nap),

that the past is always catching up to the present, shadows overlapping each other and to reject one means denouncing your whole identity

that you're never going to quite know where the next strip of land maybe, that even as if you settle down the land might eject you into the water again without warning, that
in the end it'll be ok because you'd have learned to ride the waves and know its temper

that cartography is less a marking out of terrains and destinations and more the magnetic pull of discovery, that not everything can be explained nor requires one

it is adularescence, an optical illusion that does not beg to be defined or explained, the glimmering allure of glow arching across the surface
pronounce its brilliance and beauty alone.


line count: 52

week 19:

the anatomy of fear

lines: 44

week 20:

when we're young

line count: 70

week 21:

stories

no one, talks about what came before the flood
only the flood, only its force,
the way a child pushes a domino
unknowingly and the pieces fall one by one.

no one, talks about what came before the flood, of how the sky
was the colour of washed out ribbons, of how people woke
in the morning with iron clad stitches on the side of their ribs, but at least
it meant they were alive.
or how, there are stories pulsating, quasars
no one talks about these things, why would they?
when the flood rips away everything.

i know poets.
they like to write about ribs in their writing.
shipwrecks. burnt maps too heavy to hold. the moon waxing itself. etc.
but most of all, they like to write about ribs.
cages from another time to
build homes upon.
fossilised epochs of when
everything was intact.


line count: 19

week 22:

instruction manual if we had one

i have been told that, we are all musicians
scores hidden within our rascetas, how with age
we are meant to familiarise ourselves
with the anatomy of being

years are meant to transpose the melodies, shifting from major to minor
the same way you flip over a page on a calendar, or in some cases
rip, and hope to god that the lines will break to give way

still - there was a time when i was brave enough to hold the knife
and slit the strings,
i would break this melody the same way people crack glazing off biscuits
and save it for the next poor soul,
but the pencil is in my hand, and history has inscribed its demand into the linings
of my wrist,
besides the strings have long since skeined their way into this sky of mine: this is
what i ask

is b minor hidden
in the indefinite curve between what i'm playing and what i'm hearing,
or is it in the
piles of stockpile phrases
left in my lap every time i opened my mouth.
and the words tumble out in the wrong order.
i found f sharp the other day in the bottom of my mother's jam jar,
there's a jungle growing there,
in the place where our home used
to be.

line count:24

week 23:

i wish I could take the knives where I buried them all those years ago
and cut myself loose,
except for the fact that history complicates everything
self love is sitting on the bathroom floor, sewing the same wounds shut with different coloured threads
(you can blame it on being colour blind but the truth is, sewing doesn't do a damn thing when the wound is more than skin deep)
but at least you're a pretty patchwork to look at!

you know that bones must be rearranged
to make a full recovery but history says
‘no’
because history is the chained light sitting at the top of this citadel
the craze on your skin, the expired glue,
history is every part of you and that is why you can't escape it because your body is a frangible compendium of irregular half structures
and history has acquainted you with all the ways it
could break

your heart, for one has a habit of rotating 270 degrees every time you see a boy with jenever coloured eyes, and you fell
because jenever and pain sounded like eutony to your musician ears

you know, that taking three breaths in two steps
will cause a sprain because you broke that ankle seven summers ago playing hide and seek with your cousins

but
history says,
‘fall for a boy with apple crumble eyes instead,
and trust me darling~
this time it will be sweeter’
history says ‘for each step you take, you’re going to fall back two
and then you will die,
alone, forever, always’
history whispers in atticed webs, ‘peace is bankruptcy that only arrives when catastrophe hits home’

but darling,
have you ever thought that familiarity
is not safety?


lines: 36

week 24:

who decides what breathes from the slow invocation of a door hinge swinging midway,
where the hand pauses, momentarily-

you have grown use to these laws
your mother says, ‘close the door or the cold will come in’
your father says, ‘open the door or else it's too dark inside’

over the years,
you have learned to distill the shades of names, disintegration of wholes into comprehensible parts
an artist committed to the memorization of outlines
a locomotion accustomed to movement,
forever departing, knowing the future calls
with its myriad of unknown destinations
forever lingering, glimpsing through the windows
those bearing the same runes on their bones, they call
with the same chaotic grace dancers unfurl themselves
and efflorescence
when the rest of the world is not watching,

even as an atheist these are the few moments
where you're willing to believe in the magic of creation
even as the tracks begin to vibrate,
your hand reaches out instinctively, fingers
half in flight hoping you too,
will learn the act of unfolding

lines: 24

week 25:

you should clean your room
‘i will ma’
why not clean it now?
‘because i’d rather not know what’s underneath
all this clutter’
just clean it.

amidst other things, you find letters from another time
inked in your own handwriting, a self fulfilling prophecy
you have vowed to stop
but here you are, years later
holding the same old pen, writing yourself into catastrophe

there’s headlights around the bend
and the passengers in the backseat are yelling,
but you’ve taken them to be stars, believing they will rearrange
themselves just before the moment of collision
(except the only stars you’ll see this time are the ones
swimming in your concussed brain)

wondering, whether you should tell the doctors
to increase the pressure on the wound right where it hurts,
or just to let it bleed its way into history

lines: 20

week 26:

turn, the key-
this melody no longer sings the mythology we have tuned it to
days drown themselves in tidal eclipses, decoupling- masks the arrival of
another kind of depaysement

the daughter of a seaman, you grew up wired to a seismograph
of symbols and signs, the brewing of clouds on a darkening horizon meant
danger,
listen, listen
to what the sails say at night, taking on the haze of an alternate universe
in the silence of sequestered constellations
(you can’t find your way home anymore can you?)

from a young age, you were used to the riggings of the aftermath of catastrophes
the hasty refurbishing of broken bits and pieces into something of working order, scrap everything else
under the carpet (forget it all)
the ship only needs to sail forward,
but currents burn their signia into the seasons
(you can’t see beyond the reading proposed by this compass
you’ve been taught to follow)
spring turns into summer, into autumn, into winter
(but once you heard there were not four, but six seasons)
(once you heard about a ship who had abandoned the sea and found another life)

dare you dream? of stepping away from this melody,
a song without a singer, a score without a player
(who said that prophecies had to be fulfilled anyways?)
(who said that prophets had to spell prophecies?)

your heart is a lantern,
burning on a wick expecting disaster to strike, it’s the only sustenance you’ve known
(or that's what your body tells you)
because muscles store memory,
but we play without hearing the notes
listening only to the melody time had inscribed into the staves
believing it to be true

lines: 30

week 27:

the world is a dish of microwaved leftovers
steaks conglomerated in blood, waiting -
to be warmed into flesh
corn glued to the frame of the door (it’s yellow)
(sun corn?)
the corn harvests itself, but growth is burnt by
the anger of the sun

in school,
we are taught interpretations. signification
where every word carries a meaning
and every object matched a meaning,
second hands
broadening into minutes without fault,
reeling gramophones of sounds, fears
revolving -

save
the food is never the food
but all the edges and
stains of every other dish people have stuck in the microwave

you're a fool for believing
that an apple is an apple because it carried that
fragrance the one time you had tasted its flesh

lines: 22

week 28:

goodbye


thieving hands,
this, you've always known,
stealing fruits from orchards
you've learnt to distinguish ripen fruits by the
degradation of sunlight sieved through their
earthen skin-

you remember, citrus sunlight and checksquared strawberries,
how raising them to your nose, brews infinities you-
forever a taster of words, even without knowing it
you search for a grammar of taste- always wanting to know
skating past years ringed with rind,
i would've asked, as you peel the skin of an orange, inhaling summer
into your veins, i would asked if you questioned the fragrance
in the grooves of your fingertips, whether you felt the need
to charter their smell into dictionaries,
definitions so you might embalm a time, a moment, a memory
does it need
your touch?


lines: 18

week 29:

we're here again aren't we?
these age-old tales
i'm always chasing tomorrow

i am a hallowed hall and seasons
speak in tongues of fear
scientists will tell you to
not assume the contours of another person's heart
but you go
and drown yourself anyways,
every
single
time
just to see where the contours lead, and whether they will
join up with yours. because you're a nomad, always
on the look out to adhere yourself
to the compass of another

lines: 16

week 30:

if i could trace a line back
to before, before all of this happened.
where i no longer spend summer nights cracking sugar off
glazed cookies, only to drip them onto my lips again.
this, is a month of hallucinations
disgused in twilight, cookie jars with honey tipped fingers
wrapped around the lid.
all my dreams are realities warped into whispers, and word by word
i'm losing even the faintest of those sounds
there is a jungle growing in the spot where my house used to be,
there's a scratched out trail where we used to walk,
years ago, i had built this house with my own two hands,
spades and all,
we all know there is dirt in your fingernails too, and there is dirt in my fingernails when we
chopped down the trees on the mountains and built this house together
history, despite all wishes doesn't resolve itself, but
i've heard that if you dip it into the ocean enough time,
everything dissolves back into saltwater tears

lines: 17