Young Writers Society

Ace of coins

A radio tube in the palm of my hand is hot and Death holds a paw to the back of my neck with pinprick nails cool in my skin and tufts of fur impossible soft between the pads but there was a thing I came here to do to take to ask for and it was not this (perhaps there is another girl who has run for the ledge and leapt with no regret but I would not know her if I saw her, even if that girl was me).

The devil

Radio waves in the trees are not enough
to tame a life wasted in salons and promenades
when the thing that she bargained was never
hers to give.

Page of swords

"She's falling in love with you,"
The old woman holds the soft
wood in the door frame where a
child should have measured her
height, a pair of lovers should have
wed beneath a curtain of roses the
traditional way. She felt the young
woman's love like a wound reopened
with a new ache, the girl she was in
her dreams.



"It's not fair that she shouldn't spend
her whole life with you, and it's not fair
that I've been robbed of all those years
of you in mine."

Two of cups

Midnight is the rustle
of herbs drying among
rafters and fingers woven
through hair that hasn't
been washed in days; it
smells like earth and honey
spooned into chamomile tea,
a bath drawn in the old tub
growing cold. Midnight is bare
feet on cold grass and the
goose down duvet tucked around
shoulders, stars falling between
pine boughs and a promise we
shouldn't have been able to keep.