Young Writers Society

13.

Citrus breath moves through these pages,
your mother pressing a kiss to the seal
and sending this warring letter over coasts.

When we were four, I remember, you sat quietly
as I threw myself from the giant lemon tree
in your backyard. She screamed so hard.

It was true that we aged in circles, my hands
gripping yours as we rocked on the raft
built from sticks (they were just sticks).

When she died, I remember, you sat quietly
as I ripped the lemons out of that tree and crushed
and crushed them beneath my bare heels.

It was true that she had aged while we held on
to everything we used to know. And we wrapped
her in a box made of sticks (they are just sticks).

Citrus breath moves through these pages,
a letter your mother sent from you to me
that travelled over time.

14.

I want you to know what I know,
that every time your mouth opens
a gale picks up east of here;
this is the wake of a rocket
moving too fast for your eyes to see,
you are the cause and the effect.

I want you to know what I think
of the way your lips press hot
against my skin; this is a moment
before we break, a glass pressured
into warmth and cracking like so many
grains of sand.

I want you, you know,
and in the summer months this is okay
but winter is here and my hands are cold,
your mouth is in the west and your words
sink like anchors in my chest. Keeping me
here with you even when you are gone.

I want you to know I'm leaving.

15. The Zodiac Blues

It is the Taurus in you, this horoscope dispair
ruining the crevices of your bones, you're all out
of joint.

Your parents keep a ledger of mistakes,
all ink and lines and cross-cross-cross
your name from the list because it isn't getting any better.

Maybe when you're older has become your motto,
your word of words, sentence of sentences, you wonder
if repeating a thing makes it true.

16.

Haephestus made me who I am today,
the clanging forge burning my skin into submission
around these molten bones. I thought my joints
would be new, cast in gold, but they are sodden ridges
of displeasure.

I wonder that on my birth, this god was distracted
by more important things (war across the seas)
and so my heart pumps a little quieter.

He made a mistake, attaching chords to this throat,
allowing sound to caw from the depths of me.
I am nothing if not insolent to his face, a rage spitting
through my senses until I am against him, chest to chest
and gasping him to hades and hell and everywhere else
the failures live.

I wonder if that means that who I am today
is a mistake waiting to be rewritten.

17.

We made collages from the colours left behind.
The taupe of misuse, stained walls and broken wells,
this cloying sense of things that were to come.

In the sunlight we watched rainbows break
into dew drops, gold and blue in the morning heat -
he left us this also, a beauty we couldn't always see.

Stacking them one by one, my sisters listed every colour
they knew and what it meant and why (why, WHY) they happen.
I was stuck.

Ultra violet, she said, ultra marine, ultra nothing.
I couldn't see the more to the colours - what the hell is ultra?
And she pressed her lips to my hair and held on and on

because there was always something more
to be left behind.

18. One Day, The Sea

I stood against the sea
this time a motion back
from where I used to be
(inside and within the space
of a gasp, a breath
[drowning] we took)
and now something else.

I watched the way aqua
turned blue and green
and white foam kissing
the seaweed i forgot the ocean
had creatures and wonders
billowing underneath
the broken glass.

I remembered everything
about the water clinging
to your every fold,
and how I could never know
the when or how or why.

19. The Great Transitions

I stepped into the rain, heat breaking
waves over my skin. Like yesterday
didn't happen - weather witches
guiding the dial somewhere elsewhere
(where do these people live,
who can predict a storm in the dry
desert heat?)

One day in the past I slipped
up the steps like an accidental eel,
reversed and awkward against the current
of people and places and things.
The heat sweltered here, sheltered
under the bus terminal awning.
It was blue, the awning and the sky,
reflecting inside reflecting.

And I wondered where the sound goes
when the wind sighs downward,
and the cars fade outward,
because all I can hear are waves
of heat pressing into my chest
like so many gasping faces,
biting into my skin.

20.

i knew a man from bendigo
whose suit was made from silk
ties he'd found in the local vinnies.

'i just want a chance
to make things right
that I know I've done wrong'

his voice echoing in the corridor
of this sterile place, one slab
a mortuary of sound and space.

21.

6:45 and it begins;
a sun moving kilometres in seconds
and across my face.

Delete the sound of my alarm,
lock away the coinbox key,
I'll roll awake eventually.

Beyond the time of
I woke up to
I want

sleep is hard to keep
on Summer mornings
when the cold, hard light
slithers across the covers
and into my mouth:
Snore, breathe, choke,
awake. yeah this sounds like me

7:45 and we're up,
household clogging
with the sound of children

and parents attempting
the mid-morning clean
"is this- no, no, no, mine."

Feet slippery on the cold tiles,
I move, a sleepwalker suddenly awake,
disoriented but alive.

22. heartache

i once tried to halt this ache;
lance my heart straight through
and clip the arteries free.

but the sutures held,
the thread tightened.

i found my love for you was tied
to the knowing of you,
the heart without the head
lies cold in the dust.

and i know you so well
my heart aches.

23.

I met a boy
(that is how the story goes)
who kept a notebook
in his shirt pocket,
shiny and bent,
rubbed raw in the spine
where his fingers held.

I met a boy
(is this how tragedies begin?)
who wrote stories about
the people he met
on the train or bus or school
in the shirt pocket notebook.

I met a boy
(whose hair was as red as autumn)
who frowned until his nose wrinkled
when he didn't want an interview,
because he could give but never,
never take.

I met a boy
(in this story of red tragedy)
who frowned at me when I asked
the who-when-where-why
that he asked me, and I thought
this is a boy that I could give
but never take.

24. Audy All At Once

Autumn breeze collecting summer leaves
and heaving them past bike lanes and prams,
into that long, winding river.

The cold comfort of whiskey down a burning throat
(how many swallows does it take to complete a bottle?
only 2 she would say, one to start and one to end
the middle part's fuzzy).

Warm clay in the hands of the teacher,
I could never get the lines right
for her mouth or eyes or hair
and these things make the image of the girl.

25.

I heard your mother calling last night
like an echo in a landline,
two hands on the cradle and phone tucked
under her ear.

I tried then to call you,
hands cupped around my lips
so the sound could travel.

In return your mother's voice
said please, please, please
and I think our tears were shared.

26. Fairytales

Contrary to popular belief
my hair is not spun gold
or copper curls. I am not
the daughter of a god,
not the moon or sun or air.

I am a waif like thing,
were waifs hefty like a beast,
and if sound were the reverberation
of motion I would be silent.

Where do this tales originate?
At the bedside of rowdy children,
whose parents parents are sick
to death of their crying?

No, I am not a tale to tame
little children, nor am I a whisper
on a summer breeze.

If I could only say the things
which make me
and break me
I think we could not be friends.

Ugh I hate you. But more I hate that I can't hate you XD Because I love you too much. And 22, 23, and 24.