Young Writers Society

It was painted in the inky sky out my window,
dotted among the white pricks of starlight
like a code in the stillness,
in the silence,
in the cold,
and you signed it with a feather.

These maples are still bare,
just finding their tender red buds.
The youngest branches are helpless in the wind,
frail, jagged arms reaching up against a pale sky
the soft color of a blue jay's breast.

I hear black starlings cawing in the distance
like pallbearers.
These branches will look different when you come back...

It seems like the earth has grown quiet...
taken a day to wipe a cloth across the sky...
press river-dyes of green up like a sponge into the grasses
and teach the song-birds to give their lungs a rest.
Today, the shadows of phone poles are as natural as the trees'.
My mind is still
and listening.

This is silence I can sit in

anchored at the bottom

of this pool of cool darkness

that cascades down from heaven,

pouring
from the white flecks of hope

and silence
staring in beyond the surface

unbreakable.

Spring died before it came,
so I set this vase on my windowsill--
blue hydrangeas made of paper.
I promise the curtain's open
to let the sunlight in,
but sun is pale when it comes through glass,
and all the spring is left behind.
I'll sit here by the window and wait,
until these paper petals bloom again.

Today I heard an echo,
a whisper that you might be there
and my vision grew dark with fear
that maybe the whisper had come from a wicked place;
that it'd bounced off the walls
and grew faint
like a scream for help in the

distance...

There are worlds that I'd burn down
when echoes pierce into reality.
I want to see walls trapped in fire
red as blood,
and ash dripping to the ground
never to rise again.

There are worlds I'd turn to cinders,
and then fall in tears upon the grave
of what flames can never give back to us.

There's more to you than one flower.
The bulb is deeper than its color,
softer at its heart than all these petals,
stronger than the thickest woody stems.

These maples are turning green,
too tender;
you have bloomed again
from the ashes.

Smoke

I never thought I'd burn the world
...........................I almost lost you in the flames.
Was it even me that struck the match?
...........................I'd never set a fire where you are.
Some of them I hoped to burn.
...........................They set a fire in your skin.
If this is karma, it's all-consuming
...........................Justice' arms are short for you.
but that might be a little too much.
...........................Mine can never reach.
This ash is in all the wrong places.

Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Peanut butter sandwiches are for when the ash is high
still lingering in the clouds, for a moment out of sight.
For sitting in the grass in cool and mottled shade,
you and me.
For the calm before the fallout, because the storm
has already passed, turned to ash--
and tomorrow it may be falling.
Just another hour now, let's sit here in the shade,
just you
and me
and our sandwiches.

This Is Where You Found Me

This isn't where I meant to be
when at last you rose from the dead.

I guess you've found me on my footpath,
just beaten down dirt through I don't know where.

If yours is running close to mine--and it must be
since we're together-- maybe we can navigate lost

with two pieces of a tattered map
and at least lost won't be lonely.

The rest of these are just miscellaneous poems I've been saving up this month

The Faun

Tumnus wasn't always so brave,
not the dear faun that Lucy loved.
Do you remember?

He was afraid
and to bend to the witch was easier
than looking Lucy in the face when she said,

"I thought you were my friend."

Tumnus wasn't always so brave.
And to bend to the witch would've been easier
than taking Lucy's hand and proving,

"I am."

Faith in Ice

If the ice grows thin
and I'm out in the middle
why should I believe that it won't crack?
I know that others have gone in before.
I know that thin ice cracks.
And faith
in a guiding hand
isn't something I understand
and can cling to,
so rage
caged inside me
claws my heart
for what I can't control.

I don't understand giving in.
I don't understand the pull
to walk into the lion's jaws
and throw another down its throat ahead of you.
I don't understand burning
and not spitting at your executioner
even if spit won't put the fire out.