Young Writers Society

blame @Rosey%20Unicorn

ily guys <3

day one

you are the wasp trapped in my window shades. that is not to say that you are a lesser being, that you're small and insignificant, but that you put a shallow fear in me that i can't admit to anyone.

yesterday, you were a facebook page where the pictures of us had been redacted. you quote a sad movie on your wall. the sun sets a couple degrees off, and i wonder if i'll ever not notice.

in three days, you will be a shaving razor that slips against my face and makes a rip so small that it hardly bleeds. regardless, the idea of measuring the volume of my blood stays in my head for hours, and i watch the sun set behind the trees from my shaded window, phone in-hand with the police on speed dial.

a week passes and i meet a friend in a coffee shop that keeps changing its name. this week, it's the udder truth, and i think of the mechanical pressure on a cow's abdomen, how my muscles would cramp and make me sick just for a pint of milk that isn't even the milk you drink in a coffee house. the barista says everything is 100% soy, and it bothers me because i've wasted thoughts on cows that weren't hurt. my friend tells me that we are bound only by our own parameters and gas mileage. i tip the barista a quarter with a whole through the neck and think of how it must feel. you could be at the beach. you could be in jail.

a month from now i hear from a mutual friend that you moved out of our old place and took up living in some commune in nebraska. i think of the cold weather and mosquitoes, and how you're probably scratching your neck until it's red to stop the itching. the south is hot, and it seems to liquefy under the pressure of dusk. my therapist thinks our relationship is a reflection of how my starving body works--poorly and disjointed. i watch the sunset in my car, hands shaking with a protein shake. my stomach cramps. i think of the cows in nebraska. there's no milk in this shake.

a year passes and i hold my phone, shaking. it rings four times and your voice is clearly hundreds of miles from my ear. normal people would say hello, but something is stuck in my throat and i can't breathe. you ask hello? three times, say you can hear someone breathing. i'm staring at a wasp in my window. if i swat at it, it will remember my face. i'm looking at a picture where my face should be. if i find it, the memories will distort. you ask hello and i am hypoventilating. you end the call and i am out of gas at your front door.

day two

the world is not a cold, dark place
until you step outside.
between the cigarette and the icy wind,
you're never sure which trail of smoke
will kill you.

the world is not a cold, dark place
until he's not here to put his jacket over your shoulders.
you measure in the kitchen sink
how long you can drown yourself before survival
takes control of panic.

the world is not named earth, you think,
because your experience of earth is seen
through sick, bleary eyes. your proposal
is a list of names that fit better:
valium, navane, smirnoff.

the world is not a cold, dark place
because when you try to seal a pact
your blood keeps you warm,
and the music is always just right.
you could dream to this beat, in your head
ba-dum. ba-dum. ba-dum.

day three

mankind will treasure ambiguity
the way inmates treasure the stars outside their cells.
it is a thing and a half more of another,
an "i love you" and maybe "forever,"
or "let me help you" and perhaps "here is a ticket."
they will never say it plainly because your words are too smooth,
you almost make all other sentences blush.
but no matter the price or impossibility,
they will always want you in their arms.
to quote your doctor, they will say
"wait two years and pack lightly."

day four

life is like a Windows update;
you never know when it will turn off.

the fact of the matter is that it weighs too much;
there is a cog inside your brain that will not appreciate it.

if i were to write a song for you,
and this is more true than all other facts today,
the notes would be low and slow,
and i would sing it in french
because you taught me how to make sounds
that are not sounds, and by extension,
give voice to a poem that doesn't flow.
if i can shift my words like tides in the moonlight,
you can change the way you hear me.
and if we both give it our all,
though we will likely still fail,
what we don't have won't change the sound of
je t'adore, je t'adore, je t'adore
night in and night out, written on our fingers,
scrawled into the back of our eyelids.
we can make this our pact and seal it
with bracelets made of guitar strings;
we can stave off the sloth that keeps us trapped
in these vast cities in our minds, we can
find somewhere new, someplace without a name
where the wifi password is je t'adore
and we never worry about money because
even in our lowest places and most dead-end jobs,
we can be content with the peace of knowing where we'll end.

day five

i'm going to write about you because you always told the truth. you don't like the taste of wine; you prefer the rain because you can hide your body under layers. you never understood poetry, and would ask me to write the sentences in the right order so you could be sure how i felt. every poem has been about you, and if you knew this, you'd curb your smile in worry.

i'm never going to publish a poem about you. i will feed the world lilacs and honey and drape lavender across book covers, but they will never translate to your name. as i've written, i've found that your name makes the tongue retract, like the burn of vodka when the words come swarming together. they are hornets: merciless and volatile. they wound without purpose and seem to return twice in number.

i will buy you a birthday present. i will place it in a box with tinder from the woods where we kissed and seal it as a funeral urn. at midnight, i will build an altar of poems that each speak your name, and when the tears rise up, i will light your altar on fire. it is important that i feel the heat, that an ember smokes against my palm--so that i remember the songs you inspired both before and after you were gone.

you will meet me under an oak tree, and i will place my last piece at your feet as a peace offering. my skin has wilted and god reminds me that i don't have long before the bus leaves for the city. you will never speak to me, but as i leave i can hear you speak your name, though the sentences are in the wrong order, though the words taste like dry wine. i'm going to write about you because you know your name.

day six

on the sixth day,
god made a mistake.

statement retracted;
i've made a mistake.

i envy him.
i would usurp the creator
because my mistakes
would stop breathing
given a short parameter.

statement retracted;
i am the creator.

i took on god's hairstyle
the day i played a note of ave maria
one step too low and discovered jazz.
fingers are crossed that i don't start
talking like god did. i would hate
for my words to be chiseled in stone
because my accent is so thick,
someone may actually think love
is a given right.

day six.one

i run to you in the sleet of november. the country roads are glazed with moonlight and i can hear my heart beating in my ears. i run to you because the message says police says sorry says i'm so sorry.

i hold your hand as you apply makeup to cover my black eye. neither of us have done this before. why does the gun still fire in my ear? you ask that no one finds out about the game. ambulances arrive at your house at four p.m. and you forget my name for four years.

i kneel beside the winding tree ridden of cherry blossoms, think of how the bark has taught itself to grow away from the bullet embedded like artwork in its gut. the tree may remember what i remember, and this could make it an accomplice.

i receive a call at work.
are you
yes
and your roommate is
yes
this is devastating
i understand.

i run to you and you are lighting bottles of vodka and slinging them into the streets, watching the starving flames consume their five-second lives. the street is littered with glass and i run through all of it to hold you back, to shove the bottle away and scream there is so much more than this, so much if you'd only be still and wait.

i run to you and the sleet is hot, sticky rain on the planter of our apartment window. this is florida and the winds are dangerous. your eyes don't move when i open the door. you open a beer bottle and stare at the television. this hurricane might be it you say; i'm so sorry you say.

it's you, me, or the cherry tree. in the night that is one third october, one third four a.m., and one third shattered bottles of smirnoff. you load a pea-shooter with one shot and hold it to your head, and you scream and punch me in the face for moving the gun. the round fires. the cherry tree doesn't move.

i run to you in an airport in miami, and you have counted the times the plane may have hit pressure, or maybe lost an engine. you ask about the weather, the frequency of lightning strikes.

it is 2011 and you ask me to move in with you. the rent is high and my job holds me over nearly two hours most days. i listen to the radio and vendor cigarettes. i wonder if i have a roommate. before leaving, i google how to remove blood stains. it isn't easy.

i run to you and it is your birthday. you bake your own birthday cake out of an instant box and place a kitchen match in the center. you feel alive and happy, and we watch pulp fiction until dinner. my boyfriend comes over and warily asks why there are three places set at the table. it is 2014 and i can't remember the doctor's number.

day seven

we bred ourselves through stolen culture,
taught ourselves how to drink jasmine tea
while the ball game roars downstairs.
my doctor has written a legitimate diagnosis
that you are addicted to the internet
and therefore the exchanges of information
by the gigabyte. you tell me this in a skype window
so tiny in my phone that your eyes are practically
specks of sawdust. this addiction is an okay thing
and will be romanticized as long as we can watch
captain america together, have date nights
across oceans and time zones that stretch on forever.
this addiction is an okay thing
and will be romanticized as long as my computer
listens to the fear.

Your poems are one of those that impacts the way we see poetry, I just love that. ^^

I can talk forever about day one, honestly, there's just so much here, I can take it apart, I can take it whole, I can take it backwards and forwards and in pieces. Most memorable to me is the milk, that is some funny stuff with its reoccurrence of its "wasted thought" that bit there sums and says everything.

day three and day two, you leave the best bits til the very end and then make me go read it again like oooo! <3 I think the first read-through is still best, just cause shock value is such a cool experience in these.

Other than day one, because omg day one, day four is my favorite. I love the french refrains and the computer-culture relevancy and the feels.

day six is pure lols!
six.one starts out so delicious: "he tree may remember what i remember, and this could make it an accomplice." <3 and near maybe 3/4th of the way it gets more and more disjointed and the length of it aches.

day seven -> this is sharp stuff, short for you and so many lines I wanna nom!

stomach viruses suck, guys. also, ♥ @Audy.

day eight

i am a nation of cynics.
each speech i write ordains a new citizen,
and each speech they write continues
this pattern day in and day out
etc. etc., et al. and so on.

we are connected by a web of neurons
that fire off mortars when a foreigner
invades our airspace. at one moment,
as many as ten million gunshots
may enter the body of the executed,
thus eradicating the chance of cohabitation
of thought.

day nine

every morning, i wake up to a phone call.
the man sounds so happy when he says
you owe thousands, we know where you live.
if i were a more sadistic man, i would want this job,
to be able to listen to a panic attack being birthed
across a satellite.
i wonder if this man keeps a tally, like a college man
keeps track of his exploits. a simple 14 days
since someone cried to be adjusted daily,
to be reset whenever he grabs my line.
one day, i will hand him thousands of dollars,
each folded into paper shuriken
so that he will rend his fingers while he counts
each shallow breath.

day ten

angels we have heard on high
singing sorrow's sweet reprise;
and the mountains in reply
chorale the song of winter's bite.

gabriel would disagree with me if i said
the harp's sweetest notes are those low
enough for human ears. he once told me
how angels horded the secret melodies
and chords so that their undying spirits
would have something to cling to when
the father would vanish.

i've heard it in my head a dozen times this week;
the father is gone, the father is gone.
what are we going to do without his red robes
or pearl crown? so they play the hidden sounds
that won't come out on a mortal instrument.
still, i can tie together minor scales and sing with them
that the father's gone, the father's gone--
not forever, but just enough that we miss him.
it's just the way he is.

day eleven

as a child, i had this remarkable notion
that a producer was a man
who stood at the crosswalk each summer morning
and vended produce for the hungry people in town.
twenty-some years later, he's a man who posts flyers
and cable t.v. messages,
a man who claims that the american theater is alive
and for only twelve dollars and seventy-six cents,
he will show us a spectacle of the human condition.
here are starving children in manhatten,
here is a man who shakes as he takes his pills.
in twenty years, a producer evolved into a great beast
who evokes political movement with carrots,
gender equality and PoC representation with tomatoes.
when the autumn comes, i wonder what will become of him.