Young Writers Society

Olive Wreaths

Did you know that olive wreaths were given to the winner of the Olympics back before Olympia was Archia? We use olive branches as a symbol of peace, but they used to be a symbol of war. A symbol that some people won, and others died trying. I spin olive wreaths out of poetry, like a bad metaphor for convincing yourself that you're winning---that one person out of eight billion is essential somehow. And did you know that olives are bitter right off the tree and need to be brined to be edible? I wish I could dip my poetry into the brine; maybe it would be palpable. And then, it could be spun into an olive wreath that sticks together instead of unfolding into a half-crumpled mess. And did you know that olives change colors during the brining process? I wish I could change my poetry like it was chameleon skin so it was always beautiful to someone. But poetry isn't olives, it's just words someone thought were once meaningful one a page in a way that creates the illusion of beauty out of the absurd, the cliche, the tragic. But we still spin meaning into it like the Greeks strangling olive branches into wreaths.

Pathetic attempt,
this earnest, desperate reaching,
to fend off average.

Break-up Vinyls

My heart is a playing vinyl,
spinning my new break-up song,
it's the background noise to our final.

We were always stuck in a cycle,
of who was right and wrong.
My heart is a playing vinyl.

You knew how to send me down a spiral,
always stringing me along,
it's the background noise to our final.

Your affection was suicidal,
your "I-love-you's" withdrawn.
My heart is a playing vinyl.

I have to prioritize my survival;
our death has been too prolonged.
It's the background noise to our final.

Maybe we've been dead since our arrival,
trying to puppeteer something long gone.
My heart is a playing vinyl;
it's the background noise to our final.

HeartFragmentSearch

def HeartFragmentSearch():

import urllib2
import re
page = urllib2.urlopen("Memory Files").read()
print re.findall("heart",page)
print page.find("heart")

import sys, os

LoveforHer = open(sys.argv[MyEverything], 'r')
SacrificeforHim = open(sys.argv[MyDuty], 'r')
SleeplessNightsforThem = open(sys.argv[MyLife], 'r')
PeaceforMyself = open(sys.argv[WhatINeed], 'w')for line in LoveforHer:

PeaceforMyself.write(line)

LoveforHer.close()for line in SacrificeforHim:[/list
PeaceforMyself.write(line)
SacrificeforHim.close()for line in SleeplessNightsforThem:

LoveforHer.write(line)
SleeplessNightsforThem.close()
PeaceforMyself.close()

while LoverforHer > 0 is true

run HeartFragmentSearch()
end

while SacrificeforHim > 0 is true

run HeartFragmentSearch()
end

While SleeplessNightsforThem > 0 is true

run HeartFragmentSearch()
end

While PeaceforMyself > 0

maintain hope
end

If PeaceforMyself == only surviving document is true:

print ("I will finally be happy")
Else

print("Nothing will ever change")

All the Galaxy Can't Lead me Back to You

Light travels three decimeters in one picosecond. A picosecond is one trillionth of a second. The numbers are so big or small in space they lose all meaning. Humans spend years scribbling down math that we are too human to understand out of hypotheticals. Like, you will never travel to the sun, but hypothetically, if you tried, it would take two hundred twenty-two days. Hypothetically, if the sun exploded, it would take eight minutes for us to notice. Hypothetically, if we were traveling at light speed, it would take two and a half million years to reach the Andromeda Galaxy. Hypothetically, if I were Jupiter and you were Mars, we would be closer than we are right now.

I asked the stars why we drifted apart, and they spoke in tongues I couldn't understand. But hypothetically, they told me everything I already knew. The earth wobbles on its axis, throws us out of our destinies, and changes the constellations. The star the Ancient Egyptians used as the north star we just consider another star. And hypothetically, the same thing will happen to Polaris in twelve thousand years, but we will be too dead to see it. But I was not dead enough to escape watching you replace your north star, and now I am Thuban, and you are forgetting my name.

I asked the planets how you could replace me so easily, but they retrograded out of my questions, pointing rings and moons at all of the other planets. Hypothetically, they pass each other all the time. Pluto even crosses into Neptune's orbit. Hypothetically, it will happen again in twenty-two twenty-seven. I wonder if my grandkids will get to see it. I hoped they would be our grandkids, and we would grow old together under the stars, and I wouldn't care about picoseconds or retrogrades or axial precession. I would only care about buying your favorite perfume and those good cookies near Christmas time. But you decided that was a dream worth killing, like saying Pluto isn't a planet even though dwarf stars are still stars, and left me to supernova. Hypothetically, I'm not even powerful enough to supernova; just burn out into a sad smear of red.

Humans are the smallest things on the planet. We will never travel to the sun, see it explode, or travel to the Andromeda galaxy. But our solar systems collapse anyway, and the planets and moons we considered beloved crash into us or float away into the abyss of space. I watched you drift away, rooted to the ground, laughing all the way.

Growing up, my death sentence.
It crumbles blanket castles.
It needs an in-depth penance,
before I can unravel.

Please, just one last Lego set.
It all feels so long ago.
Adulthood: an echoed threat.
I buried my dreams below.