Young Writers Society

objects in mirror are closer than they appear

the crash comes into your vision / violently. you see it coming before it happens / but it’s too late. regret barrels at you / like a bomb and there’s no one to blame but you. / call it self-inflicted / call it self-destruction. / the wreckage is so devastating you / mistake it for beauty. tell me: / is this what numbness means? / trying to escape it all just to return to it again? / the smoke is inescapable. you choke / on mistakes / misfortune / mortification / or is it just a mirror? /

april's haiku

april plants flowers
in your mind, and finally
the world grows anew.

Mirages / Mirrors / Memories

Of all the deserts you have known, your memories of childhood
are the vastest. They take up the most space in your mind,
withering it into a wasteland. Is this what they tell tragedies about?
You don’t have any love stories to write about, but remembering
who you were is the closest thing to knowing heartbreak. How,
to belong to yourself so strongly and yet know very little about
the girl you once were and the girl you are now. All the versions
of yourself you are leaving behind and just getting to know. You
wonder if you’ll ever make peace with the past.

always an angel, never a god
— after boygenius

seconds pass. maybe minutes. the world revolves a little differently from this point in time. [we are caught in the brackets of a storyline that isn’t ours. is this what womanhood means?] to wonder where we are seen as angels and where we’re seen as gods. because being human isn’t enough, and history has theorized that we are angels in this world. [it has made us into something we never wanted to be. not enough but also not wanting to be.]

crash continuum

stuck on loop like an overplayed song, goodbyes always linger long after you’re gone. i’ve been stuck here with the pieces, pulled apart slowly by a setting sun i’ve seen too many times. the world is ending. we are ending. i can’t count how much i’ve looked for you in empty cars & broken hearts. i guess it’s the trying i can’t let go of; i’ve lost you too long ago to remember what it was even like to hold you. i only know open space & yet i am suffocated by myself.

in which i am a whisper

i have this thing where i like to listen to
the same song on repeat and nothing else.
maybe that’s my form of white noise.
if that means i’m afraid of being alone, then
call me a ghost: my surroundings are only
as real as i make them. this is how everything
slips through my fingers. this is how i learn to haunt.

poem about AI or whatever is left of yourself

you taste metal in your mouth. you can’t
decide if this makes you more or less human.
perhaps you are lessening into machinery.
perhaps this is what the future holds: numb
hands and going through the motions. many
days turn into many memories, most forgotten
in the wasteland of your mind. they fear the
takeover of technology while you are unsure of
what you are yourself—an alien in your own body.

memory dies with you

lock yourself in a room & let yourself become a rumor, or what’s left of one. in these four walls you are wooden & hollow, hoping to harbor your roots somewhere in this uninhabitable space. you guess that this is the world’s way of taking care of you: by letting you go. & you realize that keeping yourself in history is impossible. you can try to make your mark, try to tattoo the shape of you into the soil. but the earth will simply swallow the space you once filled (all while the world watches).

on witnessing sunsets

there is this obsession with sunsets—something
about them being romantic or wanting to be. but
in the glow of a burning day, i’m thinking that this
is just another way to glorify goodbyes. it’s another
excuse to set ourselves on fire, let our eyes linger
long enough to be burned by the sun. it’s another
chance to bow our bodies with the bending light,
convince ourselves it's something worth believing in,
like some sort of prayer without a purpose. i have
long forgotten the meaning behind them. i have
long given up on their magic. i do not wish to watch
another sad story unfold.