Young Writers Society

the thing i want most
when i'm left alone
on a rusty park bench
in the rain after dark
is hot tea
in a thermos
to hold

She missed the public bus today
and had to walk home in the rain,
so by the time she took her heels off at the door
her feet were wrinkled with gritty water from every puddle in the sidewalk along ninth street.
She waited twenty minutes
to wrap them in a warm towel from the dryer
and closed her eyes for a few moments
with a smile.

sweatshirt sleeves
to hide your wrists from sleet
sweatshirt sleeves
to pull your fingers into
sweatshirt sleeves
for drying tears on
when that bagginess
is all the space you have left

The thing about hooded sweatshirts
is that
you can put the hood up
and pull in your hands up to the knuckles
and create a space within a space
that's warm
and close
and secret
and shielded from all the things too
bright and sharp
for what's inside this softened shell.

mars&murrie

No one remembers their names anymore
and when you say m&m no one
really hears it anymore
and mars&murrie the twin giants are
overlooked a million times every day

like the two point nine miles of horizon
the twenty thousands breaths your lungs draw a day
and all the muffled groans
of someone else's pain

Gray ash is soft
and caught between the creases
of these tender hands as I sift
and search with hagard gaze
through the dust
for the spark that was left
behind.

There's a Reason that Water Runs

Can you imagine a stream walking
around all the sticks that clog it up
or feel a river sauntering past the stones
that turn it into rapids?
Water runs
fastest through the harshest places,
but water always makes it to the end.

The Reason Water Doesn't Walk

If it flowed too slowly
over jagged rocks
how would it smooth them into stone?

It's the empty space between the stars
and the stars' smallness one by one
and the faint aura 'round the moon's body
and its light softly brushing clouds
that puts the night into the blackness.
It's the stillness in a breeze that makes it gentle,
the formlessness of flame that makes it dance.
But where there are ashes of a life
cold within my soul
how do I find the spark
to light them?