Young Writers Society

2024 poetry dump, for when i feel like i have written something worthwhile

i am inside her skin.
i am her fingertips, her kneecaps, the back of her throat --
and i feel everything. like liquid i pool and congeal
where the surface gives way.
her skull is a quarry after a rainstorm,
thick, indiscernible.

i want to hear every word she has ever spoken
like it's being said to me. the tension breaks.
i feel her breath on my ear all the way across the country.
i can't imagine her doing something like that. you know,
being human. she is enslaved to the cycle, reeled
back in like a world record muskie.

this will not be the last time.
again, i will feel it. her tongue meets
the roof of her mouth.

again and again and again.

i remember the first time
i cried into another person's skin.
it felt a lot like shame, probably.
there's something so embarrassing about vulnerability;
she had left and returned, left and returned, etc.

i can be as gentle as she'd like.
i can be mean and nasty. i consider everything
for a brief moment. this is it, right? this is all there is.
i wake up on the floor again, in the bathroom.
she sweats her concealer off.

i feel her fingers digging into my ribcage,
bones creaking like an old staircase.
somewhere along the way, i have learned to come to
terms with everything unfathomable --
"make sure you're quiet when you leave."

5 am peaks through the blinds;
every house is unfamiliar to me now.

i want your indistinguishable dreams
and memories. your tongue speaks nothing
but words i have already written down.
i'm always talking about
coming home and half-open blinds,
speeding down the interstate.

i feel like i am a child again;
the hum of your engine lulls me to sleep.
it's good in the light, it's good.

my limbs go numb and my fingertips swell
like moisture in a doorframe.

it was a scorcher out yesterday;
the sun burnt holes in our skin, turned us into paper-mache.
we bonded over the fact we missed that feeling --
missed the glow behind our eyelids, the light sneaking
through the blinds at sunrise.

i open my arms and accept it,
swaying, falling. i am a collector. i house these memories
in my soul, every summer since i was seven. again and again,
my eye catches a shiny thing in the sunlight
and i slip it into my pocket.

i talk to my mother
periodically
in my head; "that girl i used to love,
i haven't written about her in months."

as it all passes,
i find more and more words for
the things my mother never taught me --
the trees, god, the window in the bathroom
that faces the street.

we creep around each other
the way we both creep around mirrors.

i think my fatal flaw is leaving things
unfinished. i leave the parts of me that are mean
and nasty on the forefront, a disease
that only she can cure.

half of the sandwich rots
in the fridge. the feeling suffocates me;
hunger and wanting
and everything else disastrous.

there is something disgusting
stuck in my throat. the dogs are barking.
i gnaw on the joints of my hands to the beat of
their dissonance. i secede,
urging, marveling in the irony of it all.

i go over it in my head
like i will say it, but i don't. i love you. let me in.
she says she misses me, but only after the sun sets.
let me in. i fester at her doorstep, under the table,
everywhere i am not allowed anymore --

i bite, growl, split my maw on my chains.
she does not look away.