Young Writers Society

Tend to the Garden

You put soil in my lungs.
Black, cakey, dotted with earthworms,
filling my airways,
packed in tight.
You gave me packets of seeds,
and I swallow them obediently.
They're bitter and dusty,
my tongue recoils on instinct,
but you keep handing me packets,
and I swallow them at your command.

Thank you, sir,
for planting a garden in my throat.
Maybe the roots are piercing my skin,
and I can only wheeze flower petals,
but I'm sure hundreds would be jealous.
Doesn't everyone want a flower garden?
They scrape at their side yard,
trying to replace rocks with soil.
But I don't need a yard,
I have roses in my lobes,
jimson weed in my bronchus,
and nightshade in my trachea.
I'm coughing up blood, leaves, weeds,
choking on an ecosystem with a gurgle,
but I'm sure that's better than no lungs at all.

So please give me the seed packets.
Spray the pesticide down my throat.
My bloodstream will turn muddy,
and my brain will just be a bloodstained bouquet,
but I'll still smile around the blooms.
How lucky I am to be a garden.
My chest will squeeze the flowers in me,
harder and harder, until my ribs shatter with a crack,
and I'll use the growth to feel loved.

Dream Big; Dream Impossible

I have always envied dragons.

Imagine sleeping for eons,
and waking up to be dangerous.

Everyone knows your name
and is too scared to lift a finger against you.
No one is strong enough to hurt you.

But I'll never have that pleasure.
Each day is just another cup of pain.
It pours over me like liquid silver
until I am encased in nothing but ache.

If only I could break out of this shell,
like a dragon shedding its scales,
and I could have a new skin of peace.
But human skin only stretches and scars,
and I have grown to fit my suit of hurt perfectly.

Maybe tomorrow, the silver will form diamond patterns,
making it impossible for him to hit me anymore,
and it will drip down into my mouth to form fangs,
and coil in my gut and turn to fire.

Or maybe tomorrow I'll wake up the knight,
and I'll realize that he was the dragon all along,
and I will slay my foes and finally heal.

Or maybe I'll wake up just the same,
with bruised and broken skin and white-hot terror.

And so I go to sleep and wish for the impossible.

Portrait of my Father

I don't know how to talk about you.
How does someone articulate your sides,
the way you laughed louder than any of us,
yelled louder than any of us,
defended me during my darkest moment,
persecuted me when I could least expect.
It would be so much easier if I could divide you into good or bad,
but deep inside you was rotten,
like a rose feeding off of a corpse.
Somehow, you were the rose and the corpse.
You were always a question mark:
Would you ask me about the book I was reading,
or yell at me for talking too loudly?
You were a bated breath,
my fight or flight,
the reason I flinch when I see someone's hand move
too fast
in the corner of my eye.
You played the victim,
you played the scapegoat,
you played the father.
You were my father.
You walked me to school with my sister in a stroller.
You sent me to school covered in bruises.
You apologized for hurting me,
but told me I was just a difficult child.
I can't even miss the good times anymore,
the thought of you makes my skin crawl
because I know you were never sorry.
You physically couldn't be sorry.
You were the sun,
and I was the closest planet,
taking the brunt of your radiation like I was made to.
Was it fun?
Do you miss me?
If I spoke to you tomorrow, would you apologize?
Would you mean it?
Will you ever understand how you hurt me,
why I can't be around you,
why I am not your daughter,
why I don't even want to say your name?
You were everything to me,
and you exploited it.
I hope no one ever trusts you again
because I know you'll never learn how to be trustworthy.

No Address

To the one who got away,

I think I used to worship you.
You told me I acted like a child,
and I tried to act grown-up for you
by pursing my lips
and suntanning in the grass
instead of getting in the pool like kids do.
And you laughed,
and told me that I was supposed to be a kid,
and you didn't want me to pretend to be anything I wasn't.

I cried when you left for college,
clung to you when you came to visit,
cried when you left again.
I cried even harder when Mom said you weren't coming back.
And I thought I had lied to me back then,
laying out in the grass,
and I had scared you away by being me.

He made me throw away all your letters.
All the times you were thinking of changing your major,
all the times you laughed at the weather,
the picture of the banana slug you printed just for me,
and Mom took all of your photos off the walls
and hid them in the office like you were a dirty secret,
and I learned to say I had one sister instead of two,
and our sister was too young ever to miss you,
and I just hoped you had moved to Spain,
like you always said you wanted to,
and that if you needed to forget that we existed,
that at least it made you happier.
And I was so sorry for making it so you couldn't be happy.
I am so sorry we failed you.

Sometimes, I still pretend I'm the kid on that grass,
and you're the cool teen with the pierced lip,
who can't wake up in the morning,
and who never left because he scared you away.
Do you wish that too?
Or are the people we became worth the price?
Some flowers just need more room to bloom,
and maybe your staying would have killed us both.

My Oak Tree Sister

What happened to you?
I watched you grow up,
like an oak tree sapling that you planted in your backyard,
and measured every year until it was taller than your house.
I have measured the depth of your roots,
watched your branches blot out the sky.

I held you,
like ropes hold up a fragile trunk,
when the storms came and went and came again,
you cried into my shoulder,
I sniffled into your hair,
you survived the storm and grew stronger for it.

But something's wrong here.
Your leaves are tinted blood red and black,
your roots pierced a fuel tank,
the grass around you is shriveled.
You yell at us for breathing too loud,
you call Mom a bully for saying no.
You cry when I can't visit home,
but act as if my presence is some great nuisance when I can.

Your branches have grown thorns,
and some days, you look just like the storm.
Biting, sneering, dragging everything done with you.
You called Mom stupid the other day;
all she did was laugh.

Did you forget who I was protecting you from?
Do you resent I'm not home to do it anymore?
Is this just a survival mechanism,
lashing out at everyone who gets too close,
launching out your new thorns in a volley,
striking every bird and gardener dead.

I'm scared for you.
Some days, I'm scared of you.
Do I just want my sapling back,
or do I just hate the oak you've become?
I don't know.
I don't know how to feel about you anymore.
I try to hold you again,
but the thorns pierce my skin,
and your words fill the wounds with venom.

Mama's Boy

If I could trace back
all of the guilt and doubt
back to one moment,
you'd be the centerpiece.

You were the one who saw
the bruises on my arms,
the marks on my neck,
the scars on my heart,
and called them discipline.

Is that how you disciplined him?

Your son walks around like he's never heard no,
like the world revolves around him,
like he's a god among men.

You tell me his dad died,
the he loves us very much,
that he doesn't know how to show it,
but don't care.
You're putting his burden on my shoulders.

If he doesn't know how to love,
then maybe he shouldn't try to.

Maybe you should stop giving him pacifiers,
smoothing his hair when his wife is upset with him.
He is a father now,
not the baby in the booster seat in the back of your car.
I trusted you more than anyone.
But you loved him more than me.