Young Writers Society

April 1st - A Brush with a Puppy Knight

The runner trots through terrain
that she is unwelcome in.
All ground is the same, but
knights and garrisons bark at her,
tell her to keep moving,
don't pause,
never stop.

One young knight,
too inexperienced to differentiate
peace and boredom,
follows her to the very edge of
his kingdom,
takes a warning shot at her heels
as her foot passes over the property line.
She doesn't turn back.
He doesn't truly want conflict,
just a story to exaggerate.

She doesn't want either.

April 2 - Sweating Conflict

The runner does not want conflict,
and some say she flees it
which is why she never stops.
When she catches those suppositions
whispered by her dearest gossip, the wind,
she smiles.

What is running but conflict?
Ground vs foot
Head vs body

She can't remember why she started
putting one conflict after the other
until they broke over her like waves
she was able to withstand.

Fleeing conflict,
she laughs with the wind.
They haven't learned that conflict is us.
Our bones are braided from it.
Our blood is squeezed from it.
Our skin is peace stretched tight,
trying to withstand the conflict.
Keep it contained, hidden.

Skin is a bad curtain.
It's too transparent,
too holey.
The runner wipes sweat off her brow.

April 3rd - following a tangent to a nearby village where a hearing is taking place

her droplets of conflict
water the stone road
who refuses their humanity
(don't you know skin should be stone
it's easier to hide behind)
and they roil
useless
and angry in their uselessness

like calls to like
the roaring sun
draws the droplets to her bosom
but they burn
(they must've forgotten that one myth)
turn into the air
(hold your breath)
and travel to a village the runner has never known

forget about them
droplets of conflict are gone
(that's what unseen means right)
until they reappear
under the collar of a man
awaiting judgement

he killed her
but there was a reason
reason lessens guilt
doesn't it
shouldn't it

his conflict will be
stilled soon
at dawn

April 14th - Running Through Plains

The runner’s
life is a card -
flat - filled with
well-meaning
words that fall
flat.

She doesn’t even know
what cards
are or which platitudes
are too tired to have any meaning.
The runner
doesn’t have the words
to capture that feeling
pounding through her
scalding her veins
until blood runs through her veins no longer
but
emotion does.
She is emotion,
rising and expanding and filling the entire road with her heart,
now truly the pump of her emotions,
and crashing
to nothing

Too ethereal to touch,
she's afraid she'll fly apart, scatter along the road, if someone did,
She's unable to stay away
because she wants the touch.

She doesn’t know how to capture
all the words she’d have to collect
while they flutter like butterflies
or swoop and screech like bats
or lay, lethargic at her feet.
The attempt makes her
headache
and her heart race
and-

She jogs in
place at the
local grocery
store, staring
at the folded
paper with too
much color that
swims before her
eyes.The bitter-
sweet sayings
that coat her
tongue, makes
it furry. Eventually,
she closes her eyes,
picks one, and
runs out.

April 6th - The Thoughts of Uneventful Days
i.
The runner can’t remember why she started.
As she passes messengers
she wonders if
her clothes, sun bleached and threadbare
once matched theirs.

She hopes she delivered the message.
Gave it and decided not to return,
decided she’d rather not
have a destination.

Maybe the message
was a poor one.
She is a martyr,
running for morality.
How myth-like.

April 7th - The Thoughts of Uneventful Days

ii.
When she passes couples

she considers love.

She hopes she’s running from love.
Really, she doesn’t want love at all.
It seems hard
and complicated,
but say she had a forgotten love.

She loves them so much

that she’d rather have left them
because she tired of


Anything but the idea
that she had forgotten
someone worth running to.

iii.

Was she created running?
She seems to have a vague, sure knowledge
that a woman carried her for nine months
and together they got the runner into light

Maybe she is merely a creation
a legend
a myth

All she is is running

iv.
Philosophy is a dangerous path.
Maybe she doesn’t exist at all.
No one can tell her otherwise.
The wind tries to soothe
but what is the wind?

Is it real?
Can the unexisting reassure the existing?
Does she exist?