Young Writers Society

We’re two towns apart
Thirty minutes away
Divided by a chasm of uncertainty
Our hearts are trenches
Parallel but opposite of each other
Destined not to intersect

I remember the days
we would converge
Like the shore and the sea
Or the sky and the earth at dawn
But now, I’ve pulled away
Receding into myself
Like the tide does
as it peels away from the shore

Someone tell me a fairytale: a lie, as I lay in bed at 12 am, nursing a bruised heart.Tell me that the l am the sorceress who puts loneliness under a sleeping curse. Or better yet the crone who can lock it away in a tower. The witch who can dissolves into sea foam.

Tell me that out of the sea foam, I will rise, fully whole, like Venus, lungs bursting with a siren song.

Tell me that I can leave the loneliness at the foot of the woods and shed it like a red cloak.

Tell me that if I just click my heels, I can reach into myself, find the hidden power Glinda promises was buried inside of me. Tell me that I lift the glass coffin and revive it with a kiss of not true love but self love.Tell me I can finally spit up all the frogs I've kissed over the years. Tell me, instead, I can wield my power like Excalibur.

Tell me that there is a way out of this rabbit hole and that I can save Alice too and restore both of us to our full size. Tell me we escape the Queen of Hearts, hand and hand and steal our hearts back.

Tell me that I can trade the garden of roses in full bloom inside my chest for a wall of thorns no sword or prince can cut through.

Tell me that I can have the glass slipper without cutting off my Achille’s heel because it was handblown only for me.

Tell me that that when the clock strikes midnight, I already made it home while the prince danced with another girl.

Tell me that I don’t need the wood cutter any more because I’ve already been inside the wolf and survived, and I can tell you if it is much darker out here.

But don’t tell me they lived happily ever after; just tell me that it gets better
Then the story can end here.

how to be a girl:

thrust your hands out and lick the scraps thrown into your cupped hands,
laugh as you devour them, tell yourself it's a sprawling feast laid out
just for you and when the crumbs get lodged in your throat,
pretend you are the guest of honor (it will make it easier)
to swallow down the rot like a glass of champagne
put on a smile for them and let your stomach be a vessel,
a garbage receptacle accepting whatever they pour into you
get used to not knowing where the waste starts and your guts end

just open your mouth wide, they way they like and remember
the hollow need gnawing at you (you are starving)
like a baby chick, so when they spoon regurgitated worms
into your wide open mouth, pretend they are kisses

will the hunger pangs away and feast on their satisfaction
because when they turn away, you will tell yourself
if your heart is a least full, your stomach will eventually follow

when you shiver alone in the blizzard hold that thought close
wrap it around your bones and let it kindle your heart
but when the storm passes, don't forget to swallow down the ashes

when you don't wish upon stars

Prince Charming came to the foot of my tower last night, as he threw pebbles at the window. He cast sad glances at me, eyes weeping stars, like he'd undressed the night sky.

He waxed poetry like I was queen and not a pauper, like I was the damsel he saw me as. His lips dripped honey and amber, but I've kissed my share of toads and princes to know the difference.

He was ready to conquer the world and lay it at my feet as I listened stoically, my crossed arms guarding my heart. I'm not swept easily, certainly not by grand gestures pinpricked hollow as an egg.

He is beautiful, like he is carved by the moonlight. And like every girl, my heart has been fed fairytales. But I don't need a prince to slay a dragon or lay its carcass at my feet. I'm scared of sprawling promises glossed too golden to be real.

I'm scared of pretty princes with forked tongues hidden behind false smiles. I'm scared of surrendering the reins of my future to a man who will only bridle me. I'm scared of a man who can talk the moon down from the sky because he's jealous of the way it outshines him.

I'm more scared of a man who thinks he can melt me with sweet nothings and pour the spillage into a vial to contain me. because he's afraid that I will overflow, swell like the tide and drown him.

I'm most scared of a man who is scared of me. My womaness, my vastness, my essence, my refusal to shrink like Alice to make him feel bigger in when he stands next to me.

Prince Charming fled until he was a speck, a tiny star in a sea of constellations, and I saw him for what he really was: a star burning itself to outshine the moon.

I can't even begin to describe how chilling how to be a girl is. Wow, just wow, that's a surprisingly dark poem. Really well written!

Thanks @Arcticus!

Aaah <3 This is gorgeous and wonderful <3

Thanks so much @PrincessInk!

I'm absolutely in love with the different things going on here and the theme is so beautiful. So lucky to have you as my NaPo buddy and I look forward to seeing where the rest of the month takes you! <3

Thansk so much Lavvie! And I feel the same! I'm loving your therme and an't wait to read more of your poetry!

even princes can be gilded (and so can their hearts)

He spins me dizzy
around the ballroom
and this is what I thought
it felt like to be to be swept

But even as our onlookers
swoon and guess about
the girl behind the mask
with the strange glass slippers
my heart sits heavy in my chest
like a stone at the bottom of the sea

Prince Charming's touch is light
not strong enough to anchor me
and he looks through me but not at me
as if I am made of glass instead of cinders

We glide across the floor
but my heart is a ghost
and as the music swells
and he kisses my hand
I know that even princes
can be empty and gilded
as their hearts, gleaming,
golden on the outside
and hollow on the inside

Peter Pan is at it again

Peter Pan is at it again, prowling the windows
of sad girls with shadows for faces large enough
to rival his own shadow. He preys on the sad girls,
the lonely girls, the soft girls, looking to pluck them
up like wild flowers and offer them like a bouquet
to the Lost Boys. Years ago, he whisked me away
to Neverland. I took his hand likea lifeline, dazzled
by Tinkerbell's sparkling pixie dust. I didn't know
until he baptized me in it that it would burn like salt
rubbed into a raw wound. Or that flying so close to the sun
would make my lungs starved for oxygen and my head spin
the way fairytales promised first love would feel.

My heart thrashed in my chest that day like a bird
ready to leave the nest for it's first flight. Peter Pan
awkaened the dormant phoenix inside of me that night.
We burned across the sky, like asteroids as he showed me
the second star to the right, a small ordinary thing
tucked away in a secret corner of the sky that I had missed
even though I spent many nights mapping stars when
I was too lonely in the night.

He told me that the small ordinary things
are the most beautiful, like me, a girl of small
stature with mousy hair. I remind him of a friend,
he told who his small but fierce and even a little feral
like a Venus fly trap is to the unassuming fly that takes it
for granted.

He intoxicated me with a fairytale I could step into
like Cinderella stepping into the glass slipper
He showed me Neverland, a wild and confusing place
that made Wonderland tame in comparison
He introduced me to the Lost Boys as they ripped
fairy wings off of Tinkerbell's friends and Peter Pan laughed
in savage delight.

He took me to the shore and introduced me to the mermaids
who wanted to add my bones to their collection. He showed me
the bones of Hook's grizzled hand he kept by his bedside and I
saw you cannot separate the shadow from the self, the Hyde from Jekyll.

Neverland was only a place to bleed on display
I begged him to bring me back home. He flashed
those mournful eyes, and begged me to stay,
sprinkled fairy dust over my lips and in my hair
reminded me that walking will never be the same
after soaring above the clouds. And all of this was true.

But I was too tame and too smart to be part of his bouquet
of sad playgirls. All the fairy dust in Neverland wouldn't stop
me from wilting, shriveling, like his interest in me. He'd be back,
he promised as my feet touched solid ground.

He came to me again under a full moon
He regaled me with stories of bored and beautiful mermaids
Lost Boys who no longer cried for the parents
that didn't miss them Tinkerbell and her tempestuous temper

Peter Pan is a cultivator of words and he waters part of my heart
the part that was fed on fairytales and makes it bloom and flower
and it's tempting not to take his offered hand but this time
I remember to stay away from the window.

Whoa. Your poetry is really a. beautiful, b. thought provoking, and c. inspiring!!! <3 Seriously 'how to be a girl' and 'when you don't wish upon stars' were my favourites.