Young Writers Society

i- folding my heart into a paper plane

when i was ten,
i didn't (yet) understand how two people
could lose & find & lose each other over again,
but now i'm standing on the grassy paths i grew up navigating
and maybe you really can forget the way the park looks.

i've seen the world from six sides now.
i've picked up the pieces of me as i went along
(what didn't get left behind as a breadcrumb trail at least)
and arranged them like glass to see myself again.
i've counted my summers and guessed how many are left.
i've followed the wrong trail of maple leaves just to lose myself in autumn
(but i'll visit before winter gets here).
i've said goodnight to fireflies but failed to say hello to you.

i have not, however, forgotten to keep the ripped-up letters.
this next one won't need an envelope:
the wind will fly it through your window,
and you will unfold it and read every last word
before you lock it in the birdcage with all the others.

ii- counting breaths, and other extreme sports

i've been having dreams about falling, but not that kind. instead i hang frozen in the sky and wait for gravity to wake up again. there is all this air for me to breathe up here but these lungs can't get used to clouds. i remember learning to use the trapeze when i was thirteen with weak hands and a loosening grip, how i was told not to let go until i was done. there is nothing to hold here, no curtain call to tell me it's over. i can't fall, but i can't fly either and maybe that's why i get so tired of my own inertia. i could almost look forward to landing on concrete.

iii- your roots crack the pavement

today, the mountains in the distance are closer to my house.
my neighbor's tree of conspiracies has grown as well
and i try not to think about how much ground they're gaining.
instead of weeding my fears, i pull the new curtains shut.
at this point, i will never see my flowers in march.

god, it's getting colder. i know there's smoke somewhere.
and look what's been left on the coffee table. whose matches are those?

see, this is what goes on with the morning fog gone.
i can see what's coming, and i can choose to stare it down
or to weave this scarf around my fingers and dream of going outside.

iv- there are no children living here (anymore)

hey, you've reached an invalid number.
you should be able to hear it in the way
the phone seems to play your own breathing back at you,
as if it's apologizing for losing track of a few digits in the digital dream.
is the static mocking you? good.
you can leave a message, but your voice won't sound the same
and you should know the recipient's never going to recognize it again.

so go ahead and knock on the door anyway.
the key won't fit and the doorbell won't work,
and you'll still somehow be surprised that you both grew up.

v- kintsugi / rebuilding from stockholm syndrome

recording

there are a few things
that you don't understand about breaking.

some things break like glass did
and get stuck in the tips of my fingers
when it's time for damage control
and years later i'll find a shard i missed
just to get myself cut all over again.
there is just enough spite and crookedness
in me, in my mirror, to hold myself together,
down to these veins that fracture me,
but yes, you really should ask me why this shattered.

and some things break like my voice did
every time i wanted to ask why,
and every time i got a lie as an answer,
when you were happier with me listening
to yourself in an echo chamber
with you so in love with your own words,
and when i finally started talking to other people again
but there is still silence in the overtones.

and some things break like chains did
after i had to burn from the inside out
all the poetry called "she is mine"
that you kept me prisoner in as your muse.
my crushed-up confessions are smeared on your canvas
and now that i'm bled dry, maybe i should stain my hands
and take some time tearing it up until june gets here.

and some things break like a heart did
when the tree finally started believing in the axe,
but that's not what i want to talk about.

because some things break like a promise did
when you sank the blade into crumbling wood
and some things break like the surface of a river did
when it drifted down into the rushing depths
and some things break like i did
under the gaze of the one who saw me drown,
so slowly and tenderly and wretchedly
and as you would say, beautifully.

some things are broken like you are,
too sharp to put back together, and i know because i've tried.
but at least you didn't have someone do that to you.

vi- takeaways from dance recitals i never had

my father loves tulips and one day he blooms with excitement
as he shows me an online drawing of the viceroy kind.
this once sold for the price of a castle, he tells me,
rambling as he scrolls through the wikipedia article.
see those stripes? this flower got these colors from a virus--
the cause of its beauty is its own downfall.

i didn't mean to, but i learned what perfection tastes like:
poison, dosed up in self-destructive behavior,
served to the viewers as a willingness to please.

i'll never take anyone to the netherlands,
but maybe i can pretend to be the entire wind-swaying field
as long as there's tourists there to watch.
i'm only an arsenic eater for the glaring spotlights
when i stand on stage and hold their roses by the thorns
as i hold the pose for a little longer without wavering—

do you think you could do an encore? my father asks from the audience.
surely you've got it in you. your fingertips aren't bleeding yet.

vii- and you gave me two rings the day after

you're teaching me to fold tiny paper cranes
with the endless supply of post-it notes from your pockets
in the way you do when you're excited or stressed,
and my hands are useless, with the way i'm staring
at the four black dots inked on my wrist
to mimic the marks your beaded rings left
that day when you held my hand as i cried
even though you said you'd be the one
to sob on my shoulder, and i think
you better stop, or i might fall in love with you.

viii- it’s a ghost story, if you would just write it

we walk over to the cable cars one night and i want to know
if you like it here. you say you don’t, that you hate
how the city has been dying for years now, how everyone here
is already a phantom and they don’t realize they’re haunting this place,
not living there. you hate the large porches that welcome us in
like a lure on a hook; you hate the lanterns
hanging like anglerfish. you hate how this walk feels
like casing the prison grounds even though we’re only here for a week.

i wonder what it would be like for the two of us
to be specters here, to wander through the walls
on the edges of our imagination and see something
we'd never dreamed of before. we could be the faded reflections
on the glass of shop windows, making faces
and giggling at those who go by. we could be
the crackle of radio static, the voices that lurk between stations
and whisper about our restlessness. we could stand
on one of those porches ourselves and watch
the lamps shake in the wind as the water rises
and carries us away into a mist that's all our own. you know
your pillars are cracking. i've already become a ruin myself. i don't see
why you hate it so much— don't you want to be a ghost town with me?

ix- find what you love and let it haunt you

you've told me before, and you'll tell me again:
everyone has their own haunting, one shadow to follow them around
and leave its inky stain on everything it touches.
you met yours on a dusky rooftop, heart humming like screen static,
and they were singing to you between night rhythms.
i think you knew of sirens already, but you didn't recognize them.

you’ve felt this before, and you’ll feel this again:
was it misplaced obsession or quick-draw craving
that made you bury your love in their unshared heart?
you don’t know who it is you’re drawn to,
not when they pull you in a dance, spin you around
and turn you away from their face when you try to look.
i think there’s some truth here, but it’s not in their promises.

you’ve seen it before, and you’ll see it again:
your ghost left you when all that you had time to wake up for
was to catch the mirror wiped clean of steam
and you saw the black smudges over where their face would be.
they’ll be back later just in time with more whispers to freeze you in place,
make you another snow-covered collection to last them through the winter,
and you’ll never think about making footprints leading away.
i think that’s how you assumed a relationship works, but you were wrong
that they get to cut you with the shards while you aren’t allowed to break it.
i think there’s something in that heart, but it’s more yours than theirs.
i think they love you, but it’s so cold and that clarity in the mirror
is fogging up with your breath again already.
i think they love you, but it’s so cold.

x- dead weight (and all that i'm almost ready to let go of)

there's a dream i have
where my younger brother visits me in my room,
past his bedtime, when i've already said goodnight to him.
i don't have him. i've never had him.
he perches on the edge of the mattress like he's going to leave me again.
he didn't leave. he's never existed anywhere at all.

i don't know what his face looks like
(i don't know what he looks like at all)
when he asks, where does the house end and the haunting start?

i'm not going to tell him that they're one and the same,
that i am replaying my own night runs over the floorboards
that i made when i was his age,
becoming my own ghost wandering my old trails.
the house relives its memories, fractures expanding in after-sunset creaks,
trauma pressed into its hallways by my footsteps,
and i feel guilty, because neither of us will outrun it. we remember
what we see. we saw our demise and decay here
as certain as this house will someday rot,
and we sprint towards it night after night again,
cutting time off our race against ourselves—

we remember the finish line in the black-and-white checkered tiles
of a kitchen that's since been remodeled. we remember
what theseus does too, osmosis memory leaking
into the foundation. are we not watching the harm repeat,
trying to understand what happened in these walls that we deserved it?
is the house itself not watching right alongside us?

there's a dream i have where my brother squeezes my hand.
i've never felt it, but the lines of his palm
take after someone who i know looks up to me.

i don't think it's like that, i'll say instead,
drawing up a new dream face to say my words to. i think the healing starts
where the haunting ends, when we take a different path at our own pace,
when we don't care what room we end up in
because it will all feel like home. the house is just the layout,
the walls we're used to walking around. it's seen some awful things too,
but maybe it'll rebuild itself as we rebuild ourselves. this haunting is mutual,
this healing is requited, step by floorboard and floorboard by step.

i speak for the other one to hear,
but only this ghost hears my words
and i can never remember what i said when i wake up.

i don't remember which one of us lets go,
but i know my hand falls empty,
and it doesn't quite feel like i lost the real thing.