Young Writers Society

i'm writing again. yay.

obscured // learning distance

her brow swallows
weary eyes in my direction
while she beckons you in. i'm
teeth and lymph nodes,
and the tabletop knows this.
you know this, yet there is
never as much violence between
us as i would hope for.
now my tears are leaking
out of me, not very humble.
you are the center of where i am,
how i am, when i am. the sky beats
me into singularity and i figure
i should be grateful for it.

besides me, who knows where i'm heading

two quick taps and a breaking
and it's your first meal of the new year;
15:03 p.m. blinks at you from the stovetop.
you've spent the day with heavy eyes,
thinking about how fireworks echo
and wondering if that's why
you dreamt about getting shot at.

as you tear apart spinach, mind
absent, gears turn ghosts of your
lichen-covered conscience. your sister
asked you to brainstorm a tattoo a month
ago and you still haven't replied; how can you
continue when you open the cutlery drawer
and expect to find tomatoes when
you forget to even text back?

when you don't sort through photos
until six months after the fact, sometimes
you wish you had a little brother.
then you remember he would be
grandparentless by five, so you don't
expect anything to make sense anymore.

maybe it's their memory that's
fuddling yours, fuels your shaking fingers
and that tightness in your chest, then
the repeated sentences and mumbling
and eleven wasted hours in bed.
maybe this year will be, can be, different.

today will be a rest day.
tomorrow, if it's sunny, you can grow.

whole // on the fear of totality

i keep thinking forward.
it is the 3am anniversary of me
and the person i introduced
emptiness to.

i have continually given
nothing and expected everything
in return. loud voices
talk in consonants and i am
hovered into the corner again.

maybe i was right yesterday.
forward isn't always better, growth
isn't always upward. i am
caught again, once, breathing.
there's no finality here.

growing old // after all that fuss

youth is only a synonym for
the beginning. at this age, the world can
end over and over and over — in reality,
it’s beginning again and again and again.
clearing the slate can be painful, but sometimes,
it’s necessary. we are a funny species if
you think about it. my old self would've agreed
before i underwent massive change.

it's something like dread or the symbolic
overuse of apocalypse metaphors. i have heard
it from my ghosts in the dark many times before
this moment, and today, it is only the realization
that matters. i am slowly becoming something
of my previous self that i cannot comprehend.

of course we always end up wanting answers

when i was about nine i read
a book about wormholes. i can't
remember why, but it was tragic, scarring,
and i could glean no moral from it. mum
and i were talking about how five years
has gone in a week and i'm not sure how
it's even possible at this time of year.

the answer is conclusively unascertainable.
the book was fictional (just thought
you would want to know) but it left me
feeling a little bit like a wet paper bag wrung
out to dry, and kept my stomach in the grey claws
of "how big is the cosmos? was i horrible in
a past life?” for at least a day or so.

hope // a bit of a throwback

willow bank hollow
spills her secrets and there
i find myself yearning.
i find myself riveted, frozen
with the numbing sensation of
sensation. there is my discovery/lying
in the pit of dusk, the rods and cones
of a sunset broken - towers fall,
too many flames light
with no sympathy.

gay people fight then fall in love.
i suppose now i should try to understand
myself a little more -- fill in the blanks,
write on the walls. it's a little
embarrassing to me.

when i think of it, i am thinking of
sweet things. there are many things hidden
in this and i will paraphrase again.
i can see you across the road,
but you still wave to me.

i wouldn't mind. i act like i wouldn't mind.

there is something more
to this -- there aren't enough motifs
in this one, i think. there aren't many things
i'm not willing to confess.

i have been looking for myself
when i have been right here all along.

(there is no word for sometimes i am right,
sometimes i am wrong,
sometimes it is not enough.)

call back to the myth of icarus —
the boy who flew too close to the sun
with manmade wings, the wax on which
melted & he plummeted into the sea.
this is the hand of apollo, god of the sun,
reaching for him: regretful he was too late?
vindicated? who the hell knows
and who the hell cares?