Young Writers Society

sometimes all i want to say is i miss you,
the words etched across my veins and pulsing
harder and harder until i want to rip them out
and write the messages to you in what
i know will be blood, which is why my hands
stay by my side and wrapped around
my biceps, voice in my head saying
if you hold yourself tight enough
you can pretend they are there even
if they had never touched me i still
pretend this is how they would have
done so (harshly, their finger prints
carved out in bruises that simply
let the loneliness out), the blue blood
of my wrists a reminder without you
i cannot breathe and i
close my eyes against the cold.

(it is better this way, i know, because
i am a shadow and you are all light
so strong you blot me out
and forget i even exist)
—April 14, 2015

workaholic creeps up on
the corners of your to do list, you
too busy to scratch off old items
and far too busy to add new ones,
but you remember every single
thing you have to get done
deep down in your heart
(even if your conscious memory
does not keep track of
the details) and you know
everything is equivalent exchange
you cannot receive unless
you give and in your heart you
know you are bleeding out
every time you reach out towards
what you know you should be
and please let it only
be temporary because
all the comforts in the world
cannot stop you from doing
everything on your list when
you should be sleeping,
(eating, or really just taking care
of yourself) because you are worth
less unless you produce, there is
nothing besides your achievements
and it is too exhausting
not to listen

(you bleed out and shrink your
heart, ribs a trophy case
for what should be idols)
—April 15, 2015

i am an oddball you say, as you
cannot quite hold eye contact and
you wring your hands, subtly,
passing it off as simple rubbing
fists moving to be in your
pockets or in your hair or
anywhere that is not obviously stressed
from something you think should
not be stressful, but the noise
is too loud and the world
too sharp, everything piercing
deep between your fourth
and fifth rib; your arms cross
in front of you in an attempt to hide
the target that feels tattooed on
and bioluminescent to the point
it is only diminished through
a sweater and a bent spine, all
in the name of muffling the knife
already in there and you know
how to heal it but people notice
blood more than a handle in
your chest; it seems
they prefer the grip because
now they can reach you
and hold on, shaking your hand
not realizing the warmth is blood
from not wanting touch when it
comes from such an unwelcome source.

you can only hide around
people who know where to touch and
how, their skin lightning needed
to cauterize wounds before
you bleed to death (until you return
to the world where they will stick
another dagger; you only hope
it is somewhere you can manage
this time)
—April 16, 2015

the letter i is a symbol for
each individual person; in
the west we capitalize it (so
ubiquitously that not
following convention
is seen as the worst grammatical
taboo) to denote importance,
a proper noun without any
single proper title to
select from, an honour normally
reserved for offices and
places, instead of something
so ordinary we are surrounded
by people holding the letter.

the narration that relies
on the letter is called first
a subtle denotation that
selfishness is success and
watch out for egos, they can
explode if you poke them
too hard, ever present
reminder why you should
not be charitable, even pleas
to give shrouded by imagine
if you were in this place, positioning
the first person (to matter
in your life) as the only one
who can ever relate to anyone. there
is nothing you can do it is only
i the proper noun who can
do anything because i
am the only one who cares

(even rendering it lowercase
does not absolve it from its
trappings, not completely, for
an unimportant i is a statement
that lets the world know please
be gentle, i am in pain)
—April 17, 2015

i do not miss you, persay, because
you are an individual who has their
own life and own ambitions but instead
i miss us, the way
you managed to pull out every
smile and laugh and discard
anxiety that you know needs picking
because overripe fruit simply
weighs down the tree, and
i hope you get enough in return
from shade and whispers
said at midnight, reassurances of
it's okay i am here and you
are a forest full of magic, don't
let anyone tell you different.

there is nothing to describe the feeling
of part of your soul unlocking when
you turn the key and it's not
that nobody else has that key but
no lock holds all those parts at once;
every spirit has each person involved
unlock a different part of who they are and
no two people see the same spirit twice. we
are a collection of others and you
hold a part of me i sometimes forget
exists in any capacity, the voice
that says don't give up, you are loved
even when i think nobody on
this planet can tolerate me for long, let
alone as long as you have in
as much contact we have had.

(i did not even think this part of
me had survived for so long because
of stories you have heard too often
but i am more hopeful than i let on
and somehow i knew i'd find somebody
not supposed to exist, one who could
touch my heart in such a way
to let me feel alive)
—April 18, 2015

i'm tired means two different things depending
on when it is said and why; some types
only mean a physical ache for more sleep while
others encompass the thought of
no amount of sleep ever being enough
to fill the void left by people leaving or
not enough quiet, a place more than a feeling
when the phone won't stop buzzing in
your pocket and there is always a beep
somewhere in the house (or in your mind for
it is not a quiet place) and
noise is too much for you to handle that
very moment, each breath you take a reminder
your body is working you have
to respond to the world or else it will
forget you even exist, fear driven energy
creating a facade best used by customer
service workers (which is what you are, really,
whenever you have to interact with anyone
you are not a pleasant person
if left to your own devices) as you
take on too much in the name of appearing like you
don't have enough to get done and "give
it to me" becomes your new mantra just so
people have an excuse to reach out to you
because you are a puzzle piece shaped
by its environment and you can't remember
what it's like to be yourself.
—April 19, 2015

creativity is draining the way it
demands your heart be laid out and
this is too personal for anyone to ever see,
your life in other people's hands
to know how fucked you are, the link
between creativity and
mental illness well known;
there is a downside to being more open
because people can see where
the words are written in your own blood
and think some parts are embellished
because everybody feels the introduction but
the rest is just too extreme (or even
worse the idea that this cannot
be exaggerated at all, and
even the falsities meant
to drive a better story in the long term
are part of who you are)

vulnerability and an open heart
cannot be maintained for long and
it is moments like this i understand arrogance,
the temptation to create someone
no person ever wants to touch because
when you are unavailable they cannot see
a red stained fountain pen and the bruises
next to your heart, poetry rendering
you shirtless as you strip down
and expose parts of who you are
too deep for the world to see
without it
—April 20, 2015

fires lay down when placed
on an upward angle with air pushing
the flames up in a channel and
superheating the space in front of it
making the fire appear small but the effects
are larger than even the most experienced,
the stairway to heaven marked
by a trap door of hellfire at the base
heat sticking to the tread with whispers of
you are all sinners, one temptation
away from being engulfed; the steps
hot enough you know this to be true, wooden
beams tied by ropes ready and willing
to coil around you should the world decide
there is only one redemption

i have been burned at the stake so much
the only way to save my own soul was
to become the fire that consumed me, warmth
whispering you are safe with us they
cannot hurt you because they fear
what they do not understand, sins
melting away into armour fused
into skin because my identity cannot
be wrong if i am not hurting others, the
call of heaven nothing more than a siren's song
hiding blades used to trim away what they
say is improper but when a sword levels
with my heart forgive me for melting it before
you kill me, and for not believing the words
it is for your own good.

hell cannot harm those who have embraced it
—April 21, 2015

nobody ever told you your nails could become so sharp
they would dig into your fingers just by growing,
edge like a razor sliding up against skin
too dry to take the edge without splitting open
(even though it is natural you still
want to rip them out from pain) blood in your
mouth from a kick to the teeth (people wonder
how you managed to self inflict that wound
but you'd always been one to defy expectations)
and a spine bent over from being too much
yet not enough all at once. there is expectation
pressing down from all sides while
you have no resistance to stay straight under
a list of things you should be but can never
internalize, your bones turning to charcoal from
passion you had once used to sustain yourself but
now the flames are nothing but a reminder
of who you had once been.

you spit out blood and the rocks at your feet hiss
go back to your softness and padded cell you
are too fragile for the world
—April 22, 2015

i am tired of writing poetry my heart
has been wrung out too often in darkening
spring, the world turning brown and grey as
snow melts but nature has not yet come back
to life. the sun is bright but the air
is sharp and words carry too far when i say
them, ripples in the air traveling in the stillness
of the moment before death and
every time i speak the wind stings
another person standing too close
to avoid words that are so dense they
act more like anchors tossed at a drowning victim
because i am not a hero i cannot save you
and some days all i can do is toss thigh bones
in a closet slowly growing skeletons periodically
cleaned out whenever the door gets even heavier
than the weights i'm already carrying; i thought
that by sitting on a trap door the demons
trying to push their way up would stop
in the face off more bodies they could ever possess
but instead they erode my foundation and drop
me into their pits unless i am smart (and fast)
enough to see them coming and get out of their way;
even then the hole remains and people wonder
why not even a flood can fill me while
the cherry blossoms are pinker this year (they
were white a few years ago, before graves
twined with their roots) and they
can provide a distraction from the polished silver
of a tree who long ago realized it
had given away too much.
—April 23, 2015

i write poems after ten pm after
everyone has gone to bed and the world
has finally quieted from nine to fivers
drawing the curtains closed and taking
their energy with it; there is too much
during the day and while i think of words
they never form into anything of substance
because they never have time when other
priorities take over and there is no way
to carve out a few minutes to create something
other than what i'm paid to do (and i
are so thankful this is part of what my
life is like, but oh does it leave me tired) and
it takes time to make words into a shape that
can be passed off as pleasing.

i cannot wake up early to write because
everyone does that and all life advice says
wake up early, that is when
nobody is there to bother you and
i wonder if they realize the irony of how
my boss emails me at five thirty am
because that is the advice he follows and
everything about waking up early is
centred around the idea of you must
be productive here is how to squeeze
more results out of you; i am not
completely interested in results because
there is nothing like the night to make you realize
the world is a wondrous place, dawn and dusk
nothing in comparison to the changing of days,
a point you can never see because we
were the ones who decided it but
something still very much happens
around midnight but never at it,
the days changing somewhere
along the path we have called time

every witch will tell you there is magic
in the places between.
—April 24, 2015

i hadn't realized that somewhere along the line
my laugh had returned to something that sounded
recognizably human, sharp edges sanded down until
there is nothing but laughter here, no need
to cover your mouth to not shatter others' eardrums
and i stare at my ceiling after collapsing on my bed
from something you did that made me laugh so hard
i cannot ever stop and the you is both singular and
plural, but i cannot remember any moments where
you held sandpaper in the form of it's okay to
be loud and you're cute when you smile,
compliments turning to joined laughter and
i can't believe i ever forgot how to do this
because it's the most natural feeling in the world.
—April 25, 2015

idealism was never allowed here it
was shut away by well meaning parents
tsks of what are you doing
watching a children's show, that's just
fiction and they are the devil's work;
turn it off. your heroes are nothing but
false idols and they whisper come worship the god
we have created to condemn those who
do not follow the proper path to heaven;
you listen to sermons that drag on
like bass in the background punctuated
by this is the only way and it sounds
more like the cackles punctuating a villain's
gloating speech than the hero's cries for justice.

you are a mirror and tried to follow what
had been laid out as good behaviour by
who you saw in front of you but this screen was
split down the middle with a god you feared
in one side and those who knew sometimes
authority is not right in the other and
you tried to follow but it did not seem to matter
what side you chose there was always someone
there whispering over your shoulder that
this is not how heroes behave and
you are a monster who needs to learn
their place, their anthems turned off
the minute you were told that is not good
for your soul, darkness gives you strength that
is why you get a rush and you learned

hatred nips at your heels no matter which
path you take so there is no point in trying
to be a hero while you seek to right the wrongs
laid out by a false god
—April 26, 2015

it's funny how i can see psychological advice telling
writers that grief can be a long process, taking six
months to two years and later on a friend messages
me saying hi because he was thinking of you and
i try not to remember anything about you because

sometimes i wish i hadn't found out first and
let your sister break the news like she ended
up doing anyway but she didn't have to because
i had beaten her to the punch and i suppose
it's better she didn't have one more thing
to worry about after losing her older
brother but i don't know whether to laugh
or cry that i kept my promise despite
putting a match to the bridge that had
connected us before (i had told you one day
when you were worried about people knowing
about your death that i would find out and
tell people you hadn't simply forgotten
about them like people had done to you
and here i went to check your facebook
three days after you left)

and i still go back and call you the best
writer i have ever known and i wish i had
more of your writing even though you as a person
is someone i have a rocky relationship at best with
you divided up in good and bad and grey and
i know your reputation would be tarnished if i ever
told anyone the parts of you i knew and maybe
that is why i keep it a secret because i still want
your memory to be honoured in some way
even though it has been nearly four years
your ghost still whispers in conversation as
we all remember how freely you would say
i love you and how much we wish
you were still around to say hi

there are no more tears for your passing but
that does not mean i no longer miss you
—April 27

maybe you could never beat me because
i had already beaten myself too much, fights
in the early morning and late at night
dedicated to purifying what had to be wrong
within me and finding every root
to the branches that had fallen on people
before i pruned them with too much
ferocity and cut what branches
i thought were wrong to exist in a way
that did not mirror a painting crafted
by the hand of somebody who was never me
and did not know that there were other ways
besides pine trees and maples and
topiaries which are artificially shaped
anyway and never meant to reflect
what is in reality but nobody
ever told me that until recently, the
old scars of fresh wood turning
into a knot that catches the chain and
spins the blade where it belongs

i am not in your garden and
the wild refuses to be tamed
—April 28, 2015