Young Writers Society

Letter to my Younger Self

I have spent years drafting this letter.
For most of my life,
I haven't known whether to hate you or pity you.
I still don't know.

I hate who we were,
who you made me to be,
our hands were made of fire,
and we burnt everything we touched.

I hate being angry
because it always takes me to you.
Cursing, biting, like a dog out of its muzzle,
if I could muzzle you, I would.
I am embarrassed that I ever was you!
You were feral,
I was feral.

An animal,
a monster.
You made me a monster.
And these were the words I have been drafting for years,
petty insults that do nothing to say how much I hate you.
I have been writing for years,
and I still cannot articulate the pain in my chest when I think about you.

But you were a kid.
I was a kid.
And I was in the middle of a storm,
and no one told me how to survive it.
I'm still angry.
I'm just too scared to show it,
too scared it will grow and grow until
everything explodes in a firestorm.

My heart hurts.
I hate you,
I hate that I had no choice but to be you,
I hate that I never stopped being you,
I hate that I was getting so mad the day I escaped that my vision blurred.
I hate that the pain you felt is my foundation.
And it's just barely starting to crack.

It took me years to accept you didn't want to be you either.
That you were screaming because no one had taught you how to speak.
It took me years to let myself learn how to speak.
I won't apologize for what happened to make me hate you,
but I am sorry that it worked.

Playing Nice with Fire

He smiles down on me tonight,
ever so slightly, almost too hard to notice.
Lapping up his attention, though,
probably makes it easier for me.

Maybe I am making it worse for myself,
even though he seems nicer this way.

Give the fire fuel to burn;
eventually, it will stop burning you.
Tonight, I'll build him a bonfire.

Oceans and rainstorms only hurt you in the end,
unleashing the ash into the flood.
Tonight, I'll do a drought dance to please him.

One day, he'll thank me for my service,
for bending the sky backward to fit his ego.

He might even consider putting down the rod;
every time I help him, he promises he will.
Really, I think this time will work,
even if it's never happened before.

I Lost this Poem between my Ribs

Run.
My veins are hammering nails.
My heart is a tap dancer.
My hands shake.
The room shakes to their tune.

My brain is running on an ellipses:
What if...
What next...
Moving hands! Scram!
One-syllable sentences.
No sentence thoughts.
Feelings colored red and stomach bile.

I can't breathe.
Don't breathe
Don't stop breathing
Cross your eyes and count to ten
Count to infinity
Count the footsteps of the man outside.
Count until the footprints on your windowsill dry.

The audience stopped cheering,
but the music didn't stop.
My lips are ruby red.
My eyes are still on the prop table.
What time do the credits roll?
Sometime between six and thirteen am.
The audience is calling for an encore.
The curtains haven't dropped.

I look back at my hands.
They're stalactites.
They're teeth.
I can't see them.
They're all I can recognize.
I pull at my nail until I see the blood.
I lift it as a toast and drink it dry.

I see him.
I can't see him.
He's behind me.
He's nowhere near me.
He's not real.
Eyes catch the scene like flash photography,
please hold while the film develops,
while my brain turns this horror movie into a documentary.

Untitled (you won't notice it anyway)

I have dreams about ripping my teeth out.
Did that grab your attention?
It seems all the mundane comments fly right overhead,
like planes with no destination,
and the only thing you have taught me
is that the annoying problem gets fixed.

Am I not annoying enough?
I have learned to be the quiet one,
the shadows and the still pond,
and the fish that eats your dead at the aquarium,
and I was taught that was safe.
But then she came along.

Don't get me wrong,
I love her from Hades to Zeus,
but she was born a firework,
and you exalt her for it.
Her light shimmers a darker red,
and everyone runs.
I don't shimmer at all,
and everyone's glad.

I have dreams about pulling my teeth out,
in front of you,
gums bleeding, and she screams,
and everyone recognizing that my silence was not a benefit,
but the eye of the hurricane,
and you all got too comfortable without the rain.

You tell me to ask for help,
but you never believe me.
You tell me it's okay to be angry,
but you scorn me.
What is the right way to fight to be happy?

There is something wrong with me.
Like black mold clogging a pipe
until everything in its vicinity is poisoned.
Maybe I'm the pipe.
Maybe I'm the mold.
I can't tell the difference anymore.

But every day, I hear her complain about problems that don't exist,
knowing that if I did the same,
I would be lucky just to be silenced.

Headshot Photography

Linen over my mirror
with a stick figure self-portrait
in bright red crayon.
I pick at the wax when I'm alone,
smearing the color across my thumb,
like I'm taking my prints.

The end result is more of a stain,
which is maybe more accurate than anything.
Everyone likes the feel of the portrait,
the glossy finish,
the unsure lines.
My reflection is just too clean.
Maybe it's too bright for the eyes,
or maybe it's just less suspectible to changes.

The linen is a myriad of changes,
hasty corrections in blue marker,
yellow-green colored pencil,
crossing out the way my arms cross,
keeping my mouth shut.
My tongue is dripping watercolors,
my eyes sparkle acrylic.

Maybe the self-portrait isn't one at all,
it's the color expelling from my lungs,
the purple and orange splatters that make up my being,
the ones that I stole from spilled paint cans.
If all the world's the stage,
I have absorbed the props,
and now I am the mirror image of the script.

Linen over my face
with a childishly drawn correction
in bright red crayon.
It smells of wax and saltwater
and makes colors drip down my chin.
But maybe I'm more beautiful this way.

Book Binding

Attach my spine to a book cover,
press me between the pages like a dried flower.
Enclosed in paper and binder's board,
I will find my happiness.

My blood will clot into words;
my hair will tangle into chapter breaks.
Once I am nothing but a reverie,
I will find my freedom.

I stretch my skin on the clothesline,
I polish my teeth into bookmark decor.
Humanity is cheap, so I'll trade it for fiction.
I will find where I belong.

Academic Monstrosity

I was always taught to earn my place.
By the side glances,
the disappointed crumpling of report cards,
the hums of the expectant.



I didn't burn the candles at both ends,
I tossed it into the flames.
I used the wax to sculpt my legacy,
the water of the burns painting my art.



Everyone told me no one expected anything of me,
but their smiles would shrivel if I acted any less.
My best had to be exponential,
I never had the pleasure of a bad day.



Stuck between exhaustion and delirium,
working in the lapses of my brain's stubbornness.
Everyone tells me I made it look easy,
but I don't see how they could think it is.



But eventually,
the candle melts.
The wax crumbles into something useless,
and I don't want to be a sculpture anymore.



I'm exhausted;
my hands are dripping pus;
my bones are longing for a shallow grave.
At least that will let me rest.



So did I,
but maybe living on survival mechanisms
was never a good idea.
I'm sorry.

In the Shadows

Poetry is best written in the dark,
in the shadow between
your heart
and your soul.
You grasp the pen,
slice down your forearm,
bleed the ink onto the page.
And no one's there to see it,
to cringe at the way you bleed.
It's you
and the ink
and the dripping page.
And your poems smell like metal,
and your arm stings
and you feel at home in this place,
somewhere between the heart
and the soul.
But light always creeps in,
the critics show their face,
and suddenly, your poem is a crime.
Poetry is best written in the dark,
away from prying eyes.
It's only in the hands of others,
that poetry stops being good.

Saccharine Daydream

I long for frozen oceans,
trapped under the ice like a superhero.
Freeze me in a dance,
drown me in sugar water
until all the fish look like daydreams
or sideways Picasso paintings.
I am not of this world.
I am a mermaid on the cusp of diabetic shock;
I am rose-colored glasses;
I am meant to be lost to the waves.
So dip my legs in caramel,
paint my face with cotton candy blush.
It will all dissolve in the water,
like a pastel human sacrifice,
and only something bitter will remain.