Young Writers Society

1. A Moving, Through Glass

Mist floated past
the grey rock faces
the high slopes
and emerald hills.
where white rivers
glowed as they
travelled down
the waterfalls

to reach the green pool
by the forest school
which was swimming in light
the tail-like threads
illuminating the empty veranda,
the doorless doorways,
the tables and chairs.

The chalkboard caught
this early moon
and a thin layer of dust.
A moving, even through glass:
small windows.

In the grains
of the wooden floor,
the cold sat down
a speck fell asleep.

27. An Echo, Through Trees

Under the pines, the old school
could listen to the sound of river water.

The rooms were not always dark,
the floors not always quiet.

Wooden planks chattered
with the echoes of feet running.

Someone had drawn a circle in the dirt,
someone had picked the yellow wildflowers.

What could those open windows see?
there from the valley with the moonlight.

Hanging above the waterfall
a dense protective fog.

in these last hours, i only see a few colors,
when my eyes have adjusted to the darkness
to choose clarity over beauty.
you’ve reprinted the old photos of us,
swapping out the ones in the frames
for a new black-and-white look,
saying that it represents us better in the moment
and you won’t be wasting color on me when i’m blind to it.

i am only seeing blue now. i used to be able
to see red but i’ve gotten too tired to be angry at you.

you say that i’m turning gray now
whenever the sun’s down, but you’re wrong—
you just can’t see that it’s actually silver
gleaming in cold moonlight,
can’t see that as the sky gets lighter,
the girl in the photograph is a rainbow again.

Life is won by the liars,
those who can smile and skate away
from the broken glass
as if they never fell,
never bled,
never scarred.

I am stuck with a tongue
tied to honesty
and hands that only know the feel
of freezing ice and rough shards.

I try to stand,
but only hear voices
saying I do nothing
but fall
and fall again.

As I grew older,
I watched my peers skate through life,
some nailing every jump
(college, wedding, house, children),
others fallen so many times,
they've forgotten what their legs look like unbruised
(flunked out, fired, divorced, just trying to survive).

I thought I was cursed to keep falling,
that there was no re-training these swollen legs,
that the only spot for me in the rink was the penalty box,
though I'm hardly the fighting type.

But one day, I landed.

It was shaky,
no perfect 10s, not a soul in the bleachers,
but I was upright, and that was something.

And it's easy to forget
that even your heroes fell once--
they've just gotten better at hiding the scars.

#1

#176

@Liminality
(first thank you for using regular numbers instead of roman numerals for me, I noticed that! ) I liked that your 2nd poem had echo in the title - that was a cool nod to the activity of returning to something from the past. There is something so mysterious about both poems like the nature is watching the scene unfold but the reader isn't privy to what's happening so is hearing the story second-hand.

"What could those open windows see?
there from the valley with the moonlight."

^^ The question really is left lingering and mysterious!

@Typowithoutcoffee oh my goodness we have some vintage typo poetry <3333 Love that you returned to your very first napo poem - and you took a really really different form route, and yet the theme/subject stayed the same. Good use of striking in this. There are some really painful lines in the second half of the second poem! Thank you for sharing!

@SilverNight - I REMEMBER THIS POEM from 2021!! The new poem has a great contrast & connection with the first and is somehow still as vivid even without the heavy formatting because of the direct language.

i don’t need someone
to point into the shadows of our relationship for me
and pretend that there are colors in you that i can’t see.

Ooof! Creative metaphor of the colors of a person that can't be seen / pretending features etc. It reminds me a little bit of my dark cyan poem which is a bit about color perception, but from a different direction. I really enjoyed all the color symbolism you used along the way, and I don't know if you intended this - but I kind of imagined the speaker of the second poem to be the speaker of the first poem after some years had passed and that was neat too. Great job!

@niteowl! okay this was neat because I actually remember reading that first poem of yours too! I definitely see the connection with the ice/skating metaphor - and there are some parts in the 2nd poem that are just very relatable in a way, especially the reflections in the first stanza. I like the reflective stance of the final stanza though too - it's not hopeful per-se but feels like it kind of comes around to seeing the skating / experiences in a new light.

@lehmanf thank you so much for participating! You traveled a lot of distance between that first and final poem, right?! there's some really fascinating nature imagery in that second poem - and in both of them a sense of life passing by the speaker all around. I thought this phrasing / question was really unexpected but very poetic:

Do you still hate me
or is it the memory of those beautiful blossoms licked in roaring flames that hurts you?

Ah great lines!

@starlitmind, I know you didn't officially enter, but thank you for taking the time to do the activity too! I always love reading your work, and somehow (unsurprisingly) you were able to take such ordinary imagery like the dishwasher and turn it into something really heart-striking. The uncomfortable bodily imagery throughout I think really stands out to me (I think there must be a word that's the opposite of "personification" maybe "objectification" but not sure...but whatever the word is -> using these object descriptions for a human is so uncomfortable but really carries the point across. And the repetition of "I am not happy" throughout is simple, and yet very effective in getting this persistent / overwhelming tone across. Well written! <3