Young Writers Society

i.
you will go to the paper towns, and you will never come back

sometimes you wish you could chose the day you get to die.
you would chose today, when you wake up and the sun is in your eyes
and it's so bright part of you thinks you might already be dead.
you tell him your theory about choosing the day you die and he rolls his eyes
and tells you if you want to die so bad, why don't you go step in front of a bus?
it'll save me some trouble, anyway.
so you walk outside and stand in the street, but no buses come to take you away
and the kids with their bikes won't run you over either.
you fall asleep in a gutter and when you wake up, you have to put your spine back in place
because somewhere along the line, you started sleeping with it curved around you
like a blanket.
you wish some days you could wake up and be dead,
but there are no dandelions around in your concrete garden to make that wish come true.

ii.

tell me how all this,
and love too,
will ruin us



i'd like to see life ruin you

when you're nervous your fingers tap out a waltz
on your blanket, and if you're watching really close
you can almost see the music spinning in your eyes.
you hold onto life with both fists, because dammit
you deserve it and life holds you back, a tender embrace, because
maybe it's true that all this and love will ruin you
but dammit, you'd like to see it try.
you can count on your hands the number of times everything hit the fan,
the amount of times you had to pick up the pieces of someone else,
and stick the jigsaw back in your soul-- but dammit they never really fit
quite right, did they?
when you're nervous, your fingers tap out a waltz.
when you're angry, they spin pirouettes in the air around your head.

iii.
i know why it is that car crashes only happen at night

when you were small, you used to sit and watch the cars on the highway
and wonder where they were all going, in such a hurry.
the lullabies of twisted maps all coming to explode before your eyes
with rusted tail pipes and bright head lights;
would lull you to sleep and you'd wake up in a different town,
with a different name.
(but still the same old, worn out soul.)
the soles of your shoes were worn out too, but you still walked along
the road at dawn, when there were no fireworks of cars,
when it was just peaceful, counting the wide yellow marks on the road.
no matter how far you walked you always ended back home,
shuttered into a house much too small,
screaming every time a car slammed into a guardrail
screaming every time you heard the whisper of metal on metal
remind you that your soul was being torn apart at the seams
and stitching it back together for the hundredth time wasn't very
good for it's heartbeat.

iv.

y'all smoke to live. i smoke to die.
-looking for alaska



it's a metaphor



you grab and grab but there's nothing to hold onto
there's just air and the skin of a stranger that wakes up beside you
and doesn't remember how they got there.
you go to sleep every night, and when you wake up you're in a new town
but you've still that same old, smelly soul
and you can't get rid of it
no matter how hard you scrub your chest
with the burning embers of a dying fire on the end of your cigarette.

you breathe and breathe
but no matter how hard you try your lungs are filling with water
you're drowning in yourself, you're absolutely dead
and the cars smacking each other around on the highway
was your funeral song.

v.

close only counts in hand grenades



(Madness; noun
running in circles to you fall over like a dog)
I spend my days counting things.
Like, I know that there are 42 celling tiles
In my grandma's kitchen
And that one is smeared with peanut butter
From an 'accident' no one will talk about.
I'm an accident, you see. I walk and walk and bump into things
And sometimes I see them
And sometimes I don't.
I trip and fall and scrape my knees,
But no one gives me a band aid so
I have to go church with scraped up knees
And everyone laughs.
I'm an accident, because I put on panty hose the wrong way
And Mommy gets mad, but she doesn't get that panty hose is hard
And constricting the things I use
To walk with
Is even harder.

(Madness; verb
Running in circles)
I hold onto my skin with both hands
Or it flies away.
I hold onto my skirt so it doesn't fly up
'Cause only sluts show the pretty boys
With hand guns and fast cars
Their underwear.
I hold onto everything but it still gets
Yanked away
Poof, gone, nothing left but me,
A black hole meant to be a girl.

vi.

a memoir of every night i didn't sleep with you

i wrote ten poems for you
did you read them, darling?
every single one of them was blood, guts
and glory, every single one of them was my ribs
torn from their cage, sewn into that dress you liked
oh god, you didn't read them, did you?

i memorized them standing on the edge of the roof
contemplating flight. i read them to the birds and they
carried me away when away when i tried to jump.
every single one of them is my heart carved in stone.
the birds say i'm wasting my time, but good god, you're so pretty
when you sleep, how could anything about you be rotten?
you're so pretty my sweet

the stones beneath my feet are getting closer
are you going to save me, my darling?
they're hurtling towards me, i don't think i'm ready to die.
there's a million words between stay and go, and i always pick the wrong one

vii.

what do you say when your lungs are full of water?


1.
there are three words stuck in my mouth
every time i cough they cut up my throat
baby it hurts kiss my skin and make me forget
baby it hurts fill my my mouth with soap and make me clean again

2.

i love you
no, that's wrong
i hate you
you hate me
we hate life
let's end it
run away together
two people in love--

3.
i always mess up, don't i?
i write and write and write,
but the words are wrong
or maybe it's the people
in the wrong places in life
to find love that works
and doesn't destroy
baby you killed me
baby i exploded like a star
and now i'm just a black hole
baby do you still love me?

4.
i think i died
on the side of the road
in the back of your car,
or under the stars in the bed of his pick-up
or on the floor of the kitchen, covered in batter,
or a million other places you held me too tight
and i nibbled on your neck.
baby, i think i'm dead

viii.

where the ocean leaves the sand

one.
i am everything you are not.
a droplet of rain smearing the ink of your book,
a grey mist hanging around your eyes so you can't see.
i am dry skin paper that peels every time you touch me.

two.
you are kind, my darling.
and you don't hide your shotguns in your mouth
or your pills between blue blankets spread out beneath a sky full of stars.

three.
your eyes are the galaxy,
and i swim in your constellations
and get lost between planets
for days and days.
you didn't give me a map, but somehow i know
home is between your eyelashes.

four.
i am everything you are not.
i sing in the wrong key and trip and scrape my knees
before church, and there's no time, you'll just have to go with
bloody knees and everyone will see.
i am everything in a jumbled heaping mess
that's hard to sort through and my soul is rotten.

five.
you are world shattering, my love
you take pieces of the earth and make them whole again
you took me and tore me apart, bit by bit.
you left me in places and then forgot where they were
somewhere behind the shower curtain, maybe?

six.
i am the sand beneath your toes
you are the ocean that peels me back
layer by layer
and then leaves me for dead without saying goodbye.

ix.

(a collection of dust between parentheses)


they tell you when you're born the most important thing you'll ever do is die

but i think the most important thing you'll ever do is a collection of moments
(a collection of i love you's and i hate you's and fuck you's that you never say
a collection of fast cars and shotguns hidden inside mouths
a collection of never pulling the trigger
a collection of wanting to drown inside the driest summer the south west has ever seen.)

you'll grab hold of skin that rips from rib cages far too easily
and you'll say i'm sorry to a closed door
and it's too late from the other side.
you'll trip down a side walk and wonder if the stars are real or just airplanes
you'll tell me 'it's all too real, it's all over, everything's finished'
while you're writing new beginnings for so many other people.
you'll tell me that my life finished and your career was over the second we met
while you get promotions and i color the world with paint (or blood, whichever is handy)
you'll tell me about your not-so earth shattering love
while you're kissing my eyelashes one by one.

they tell you when you're born that the most important thing you'll ever do is live.
but i think the most important thing you'll ever do is this moment.
(here, between parentheses.)

x.

horoscopes; noun (false hope)

i wish i knew how to read palms
so i could tell you that
every little thing is gonna be okay.
i would take your fingers and kiss each one
and whisper against your skin that
i find every new bit of you as magical as the last.

i wish i knew how to read palms
so that i could say with absolute certainty
here's to never pulling the trigger and always getting out alive.
i would paint the back of your hand blue
like the sky that reminds me of you--
but everything reminds me of you
so i'd have to paint you a rainbow.

i knew you like the back of my hand,
but people never know the back of their hands like they should.

xi.

this is a religion



1.
i spent my mornings counting on my fingers
how many times i screamed so loud i shattered your skin
into a million broken pieces.
and no matter how many different ways i try to put you back together
your body is a jigsaw and i'm missing the most important pieces.

2.
and how many times you took my hands and said
these are the reasons nobody will sleep with you.

3.
this is your religion, this is your god
wrapped up in blankets and pressure on the bullet holes
to stop the bleeding.
but for whatever reason, shots to the head never stop
shooting out phrases i can't understand

4.
you took my ribs and held on so tight the skin came off and you said
you're the reason we can't have nice things.

5.
i like everything in an ordered line
first comes, love;
then comes a kiss you to your cheek;
then your thighs;
and suddenly we're rolled up in a ball and tossed under the bed
like we were actually never there

6.
your hands are cracked and bruised, but when i try to kiss them and make them feel better you tell me
you can scrub and scrub and scrub and never be clean of me.

xii.

,.
of all the things i don't understand
puncuation is my worst subject
i write puzzles in the form of stories
in the form of poetry
but it never changes
i could write and write and write
and still not know where that goddamn comma goes

;.
it's my fault
you tell me
eyes drunk with tears
it's always
my fault
i never told you
that sometimes your body won't fit
in the smallest of places
and that's okay
i'll love you anyway

!.
of all the things i don't understand
i'll never understand why you feel the need to shout my name
to the entire world
the world is too fragile to hear your voice at 3 am
but you do it anyway
scream and scream and scream
until i cover my ears just so i can get some peace in this godforsaken place

?.
i don't know how to ask questions
or raise my hand in class
so i keep my mouth shut
and my head down
and hope nobody notices that my nose is bleeding

//.
now bodies
that i understand
i understand that sometimes a man and a woman
or a woman and a woman
or a man and a man
love each other so much
that their bodies are wound together so tightly
it's impossible to pry them apart
i don't understand where that love comes from
so instead of winding tightly around you
i sniff out clues around your head board
looking for that missing piece of love
everyone else seems to have

&.
of all the things i don't understand
punctuation is my worst subject
i write puzzles in the form of stories
in the form of poetry
but it never changes
i could write and write and write
and still not know where that goddamn comma goes

xiii.

schlemiel; noun

sometimes the person you thought you'd break isn't the person you actually do. sometimes, you're planning to snap somebody's world in two and suddenly you're the one with all the broken pieces on the floor, you're the one who gets to say shit, my life is over.
sometimes the person broken fell apart simply because they couldn't hold it in any longer.
sometimes the person broken is so used to it, they just leave the pieces on the floor for the dog to eat as a midnight snack.

xiv.

here's to getting out alive

here is a collection of every me there ever was.
here is me in fourth grade, with my missing tooth and freckles.
here is me in sixth grade, all awkward limbs and too tall for myself.
here is me crying on the bathroom floor because you left and said you were never coming back.


here is a collection of me stealing daddy's shotgun
here is a collection of me hiding it beneath my pillow
and hearing it's lullaby every night.
here is a collection of nights i never pulled the trigger,
just hid it inside my mouth for safekeeping.
here is a collection of every morning i said
i'm glad i got out alive.