Young Writers Society

i'll be posting the lil lms poems here!!

week one:

and the sky is not filled with people.

if i could, i would place my eyes on your dashboard
so that i could see you always.
when you drive home after work, it will remind me
of the time we sat in your car and talked about the sun setting before us
as if it was the last beautiful thing we would see.
the sun was a fading star, and we were dying, too.

i stole you from a song. i wrote you into lyrics,
and i sang you into the expanding night sky. send me a postcard
from the north star and tell me what it looks like from way up there
with me way down here, beneath your shoes.
you're crushing me, friend. you're crushing me, and i'm dying again.

these waves of thought crash over my head as i am silent, and you are the water;
i see your face in a liquid form of you, and you look just like your father, if you ever had one.

to love you as much as this would be to submit to this ache. and i'm so done with growing pains.

week two:
unzip this: skin.

not behind closed doors, but behind drawn curtains.
i'm studying your face and the way your hands move backstage. (your hands
are splitting, and i am not the one pulling the seams.)
i can feel your smile against my skin, how you stayed almost perfectly
still.

you ran your fingers along my back like a xylophone,
as if my spine was an instrument for you to play.
it sounded a little like schindler's list
or amelie tearing ou quand from her walls.

i'm a girl, and i think that makes me a flower.
i'm asking you for my petals back.

not behind closed doors, but behind drawn curtains.
my feet were superglued to the floor and you were pulling me
closer to you. but my feet were superglued to the floor,
and i wasn't going anywhere. your knuckles were resting
between my lips. and i forgot to keep breathing,
so you kept walking.

week three:

cut along this line.

i cut my fingers on your teeth
digging around in your mouth for, you'll probably
miss me again, when you look beautiful tomorrow.
you pulled my hands away.
you sat so patiently with your lips parted towards me,
and i was sinking into you again.
as i stitched your throat back together, gently;
with a needle i called my own fingertips, you called me
your seam-ripper. and i wanted to rip you open again.

i cut my hands on your hips, lifting you higher
so you could see the bright yellow sun rising above us.
you told me it was solace. and i said to you, “this is chaos.”
if only i was as gentle as you, but i am a seam-ripper. and i am destructive. and this is chaos. and i asked you not to speak, but you were spilling
everywhere.
i stayed late to clean all these
words up from the floor.

i cut my arms while holding your back.
and you held me, and one of us was unraveling.
but i couldnt tell who, so i didnt let go.
i was your seam-ripper, but I was holding you together.
let me be your seamstress, and i can sew you back
together before i sew us to eachother.

week four:
it was a weightless winter/it was a cold february

i wanted it to be summer so badly that i stayed up all night
just to watch the sun wrap its arms around the world
and knit its golden light between the branches of the naked trees
as if to make up for a lack of leaves.

this beauty was overwhelming.
this beauty was mine, as i sat on the porch next to some dog.
maybe the trees weren't as appreciative as i for the sunlight
filling the unholy cracks between skinny branches.

i sat with a dog and smoked cool air and wondered how
the trees felt about springtime.

it was a weightless winter,
carrying a heavy burden.
it was a cold february
and maybe march would be mine.

week five:
for i forgot to find myself.

i carved my lungs into my desk,
overlapping hearts and crosses where i crucified
jesus and crushed him beneath notebooks
and studied pencil shavings, spiraled and folded over themselves
like DNA strands or like
timelines. i carved my lips into my desk,
where i spilled sour lemonade between cracks of dried skin,
stinging cuts that haven't yet healed from yesterday's
sleepless night and this morning's silverware.

i carved the number of bones in my skeleton
into my desk, and i wondered why it wasn't tattooed
on my back, perhaps. and i wondered
if the body is art, i think that perhaps my creator
was too afraid to sign his name on my skin.

week six:
untitled rn.

this could be the summer of
shredded knuckles and sunburnt cheeks,
lemonade that makes your teeth like chalk
and your cheeks like cobble against your tongue.
this could be the summer of heatstroke, drop-dead,
stray cats, hold my head too close to your shoulder.

this could be the summer we stop swearing, curse middle school.
we could light our fingers like matches, set our heads on fire.
this could just be a hot day in march.
sit on a swing, read a book, drop dead, hold your head
too close to my shoulder. (get distracted by the backs of our
eyelids.)
this could just be a warm afternoon. cloudy skies,
naked branches, pretty faces like yours. (crooked teeth.)

when you met me, i
was licking apple cider
off an expensive painting.
you offered me a cup.