Young Writers Society

and when they find us and what is left of you
in the morning, they will have to sort through
lakewater-chilled pebbles and snapped shells
that all your favorite birds discarded here
once they became too hollow for their appetites.
who would scatter you, you elegant construction
of tragically fragile bones that scaffolded
a starry soul? i toss a pebble and somehow
the whole lake shudders. cold wind blows your way
and somehow you are knocked down. none of it
makes sense to me, you see: no proud skyscraper
would crumble into dust from a glancing blow.
i don't see how you should. i don't see how
everything you were built upon should fall so low.
i don't understand how you are now a little too close
to the water level, the ripples i caused threatening
to erode you and the final pose that your bones sculpt
on the earth, at peace, skull still tilted back to the stars.

to bury after the colder solstice is to declare war
on hardened soil, and after a few hours of me
battling the earth with a trowel, you might see
why i never plant the wildflowers this time of year.
the birds get it. they aren't here to see the dirt
under my nails. they're too wise for that.

wait for kinder days, please. all these seasons
and you chose the cruelest one to migrate in.

you were always a little too intent on seeing
the other side of the surface ice that frosts you
away from me now. it's all the same, i said,
all the same anyway. no shade of white
is worth the slumber. if you did see otherwise,
spot some fractal pattern of air bubbles trapped there,
don't lure me in with it. the cracks over the lake
are spreading and it was such a pain to get you back.

ironically, it's the thaw that makes you shiver
as the lake learns of rain rippling the surface
that jealous snow once hid for itself. your name
is stitched into my jaw and it speaks itself to you again.
the letters uncurl their ashes in my fireplace and stretch
back into paper as a new, gentler warmth than that
which charred them rouses them. they're still addressed,
i know, my ink hasn't forgotten you. but your residence
is divided between a cold shore and an unforgiving lake,
and you are headed somewhere— somewhere lovely, i hope—
that you cannot escape and that i cannot follow you to.
all that is left to do is start a new fire and draw the curtains
against the march flowers you were so determined to see.

i write to a callous love and say that
the pines are not the green we knew. i write
to a dead constellation and say that
we are all having trouble remembering
its name. i write to the suspended rain
and say that the symmetry between
the drops is disturbed, in need
of rearrangement. it would be best
if it all fell now.

should it be warmer, i might finally let
these ghosts collapse. but we are too faded
for such things.