Young Writers Society

honesty is the scariest policy the
saying you always quote when you point out
character virtues can be flaws, have you
ever seen the chaos that comes
when somebody is always honest?
the projection not lost on you
(haven't you heard projection is bad for you?)

you had to hide to keep your own sanity the
halting pauses before every action
simply a sign of you need help and
nobody would listen when you said help was
the single most destructive force in your life,
leave me alone a mantra that you knew
would hurt long term but in the short
it was the only thing that kept wounds
from reopening in a salt mine

typos betray your shaking hands and
you shriek at every one because
nobody will ever love you if
you cannot believe what is so obvious
to everyone else (yet it feels like
more of a chicken than an egg— how
could you be competent if the only
feedback you ever got was how wrong
you were and if you didn't fix it
nobody would ever believe your virtue)

— April 13, 2016

parade rest will forever remind me
of standing with my back to a fabric
covered mirror while trying not to watch
classmates practice skills meant to dazzle
(and catch my breath between) the troupes
during wartime. we always had been on the other
side of every moment in history where
you would be in the audience and i
would be a morale boosting fantasy where
the audience could imagine their lover
(somewhere far away, safe, a luxury not
afforded to me as i catch your eye in the crowd)
dancing to a rhythm made classical but
sensual, enough that they would remember
who they were fighting for and i
tried not to fall in love

my fantasy already ends in tragedy like
every other woman who loves another
of the same— you have already selected
a man in a different part of the field and
i do not begrudge him for you are close in
a different sense, one that is sometimes
even better

but please, god, do not allow
the rest of the story
to play out in a body count

— April 14, 2016
parade rest

the future used to look like
a lighthouse in the storm, a single
fixated point that guided you
to a rocky shore that would keep you
alive (for now), the rest of time a fog bank
shrouded in anxiety and dread, something
tolerated in the name of the light
you wanted more than anything.

now the future is
a calm storm and empty calendar where
the lighthouses are reflections on clear water
with not a hazard in sight, nothing that
could stop you from charting any course. the
expanse is greater than you have ever seen with
more room to breathe than you thought
possible, energy no longer spent bailing
a leaky vessel that never quite was
the right one

you wish the ocean had the ability
to swallow you whole; this blank slate
is too easy to get lost in and
you do not know how to admit
it was never supposed to be this way

— April 15, 2016

you tell me i am spoiling you with
every passing day, it feels like, me
nodding along only because
i do not know how to say that

this arrangement is the other way around where
you are the strength and light and love that fills
what i thought was a black hole and nestling me
in softness i had thought drowned down into
my own personal hell (and i feel guilty every day
for dragging you down with me). a void stops
being barren when you are here and words
will never be able to encapsulate how i feel about you
no matter how long my sentences get or how many
poems i write. you have given so much of
who you are and i know this arrangement
is not equal, with you having filled in parts i
had forgotten even existed with your own
generosity and

i wish i could find more words
to say how thankful i am

— April 16, 2016

there is a story i keep tucked
close to my heart (next to where
your memories live): man found the night
too dark so creator made the moon
so there would always be light, somewhere
even when the stars do not shine and

you give off enough light to be both. i am
terrified that one day the sun will collapse and
what will i do without you

— April 17, 2016

in medias res, the middle beginning, the time
when edges blur and you aren't quite sure
if this is drudgery or all threads coming together
to form what most people call a grand adventure
and you call terror. it is the beginning most
often butchered by those who have not missed
a curtain call, those who have not been forced
out of life's story and had another start with
the tattered threads of unfinished endings and
new wool shorn off and spliced together
with the blood of a sacrifice, the offering of
please let me live another day, i promise
i will not ruin this chance.

— April 18, 2016

you are tearing up in a makeup artist's chair
while she apologizes for poking you in the eye
and you want to tell her: this is what
an anxiety attack looks like but instead you
laugh it off and say it's been a long day
while you can barely look at your reflection
because every glance is a new red dot and a new
gray streak that refuses to ever leave, everything
growing outward after nearly three weeks
of properly taking care of yourself and
you want to hide the evidence
hidden after you had crossed the line twice
neglecting your body to the point
it appeared healthy because there wasn't
enough blood to even form dark circles let
alone turn your eyes into purple sockets.

the only way you can get control, lately,
is to keep adding more (when everything
in your past says: take less, eventually
you will learn to be satisfied)

(you never are)

— April 19, 2016

you write poetry when going out to the grocery store
pretending that your existential crises can be solved
with a couplet that doesn't belong anywhere and
you never end up writing them down leading
to a failure you do not want to process because
there are no rules except your own self imposed
limitations and you made it harder on purpose (as
you always did, you lost your second language because
your mother laughed at you for making life too hard
by doing everything in a language you could not
understand because you thought everything was
supposed to be difficult), but unless you are always working
how can you justify your existence (in a world your mother
kept saying you were not built for because you needed
to work so much harder than anyone else

why should having fun be any different)

—April 21, 2016 (midnight)

it is haunting to look back on your history and say
here is exactly where i was before
everything happened, and it is three weeks
into medication i did not have at the time where
you know life chewed you up and spit you out
but you hadn't realized it was
quite this much with every action dulled
from half a tablet swallowed at bedtime
and it equates to a time you thought you were
perfectly okay with the level of stress just
a little paralyzed by what you had to do (you'd
never done it before that was the problem
obviously) while you look at what you have
now and tell yourself i do not want this
to be as good as it gets and you wonder

what happened from then till now to make it
you no longer consider what had been your best
and most uninhibited time of your life not good
enough where you reach for help instead
of pushing through like she told you because everyone
feels this way sometimes and if you do not get better
you will fail (all because asking for help
was something you were never taught to say
and you do not know how to begin learning
how to make your tongue wrap around the words)

— April 21, 2016 (evening)

you keep looking at
night and day how the cycles dictate
so much of our lives and have always been
the hallmark of opposites, yet when asked
which do you prefer you can never quite
reconcile that night is your day

you feel like you should be sleeping when
pressure around the world to be productive
trips more in your mind than you can give words for,
the unspoken expectations (which are spoken to you
bluntly, for you did not ever understand that
you are a part of the world) that say
daytime is for availability it is when everyone
else will expect you to function and understand
who they are and what you do and you must
be available because if not
you will only let them down

(and you have done that to yourself too much)

— April 22, 2016

my love,

i keep writing poems to others and trying
to write poems about you, for how can a garden
be nurtured without attention. i keep trying
to find words for feelings i have never
experienced before as i turn over soil
with a trembling hand because nobody
ever taught me how to to nurture a tree

and i know you will tell me this metaphor is
incomplete for how you are on the other side
of the roots; i am not doing this alone. i forget,
sometimes, that i am not a watering can meant
to spill out perfection for something i have
been actively dissuaded from, told i was meant
to tend grass instead of trees.

(you love me anyway and
i do not know how)

— April 23, 2016

darling don't you know
your social skills are a charity case, you require
more help than is average and you must
be willing to accept whatever we give. those
you interacted with are the ones you hurt
and in order to make things right you must
accept love from them however god directs them,
because they must learn to have agency over you and
you must learn that they are not your pawns by
having no control over their lives and no control
over your own, the scales balanced as you
develop genius while everyone else works
to counteract where all of your mind went. you are
an absent minded professor who will hurt everyone
anyway (you can't help it, that's your burden, but
if you do not fix it then it will happen all over again
in your next life) and why do you forget
you get overwhelmed and need help. you are
our project and we will balance our scales
by making it you never have to work, all the while
resenting you while trying not to because

our weight is caring for a burden in human shape
and we will only succeed if you fly
(and if you don't that is your fault
for you did not use what was available to you)

(no pressure)

— April 24, 2016
saccharine

you are a glass jar, brittle yet
strong enough to hold in a hurricane.
smooth edges deflecting everything and
you learned long ago to file yourself down
into delicacy, fingers able to hold a file but
only to the sand grains you were formed from
(a history you wish to erase) and no longer able
to hold up the weapons you know you need
against the storm raging. everything but passivity
is a kiss of death, throwing stones around
structural supports designed to be gentle and
soft to the outside, a mask no one can ever
peer through, smoke filling silver in
the illusion you are simply reflecting back
what they give out meanwhile

your heart is bare.
they are supposed to see
right through your deception but
it is only after the storm shatters its confines
that they realize you were nothing but a prism
shards reaching out towards them
like unwelcome hands and they
wisely do not touch dried blood
(especially not when they realize
it is yours)

— April 25, 2016

this is the narrative she tells you:
there is no such thing as family, i am
your mentor and he is your villain, the obstacle
who didn't work on himself enough and now
he has passed on his bad hand to you unfairly
but i have solved my problems and will now
teach you how to fell any foes. i have
already overcome the people
i used to call brothers, parents slain
from their own mistakes and his is
a history you have inherited too much of,
follow his path and you will be another villain and
you will meet your downfall just like he has
in the form of a loveless end where he must
always watch his tongue for if not
that will only be the first part i cut out

this is the story you tell yourself:
i have found my own family and
my villains are more nuanced than you ever
let me be, even though on the outside
it looks as black and white as writing on
the wall mounted chalkboard, screeches
of friction that you insist cannot be nails
but i know can be nothing but still ringing
in hallways of a building i have never set foot in.

my sister you have never touched plugs my ears
and tells me let's go home it's time
to write our own adventure

storytime

leave me alone is a simple request
passing by my lips only when it has to but
you keep asking what kind of alone what kind
of silence, why is this wall being put up. you
whisper things like she's hyper now and
direct him to back away like i am some caged
animal about to lash out at whoever dares
disturb the beast (that is always how you saw me).
texts after the fact tell me not to get upset
when things don't go my way (as if this
is nothing more than a temper tantrum not
being overwhelmed to the point of tears)

i do not know how to explain that
leave me alone means go away and
all your reassurance has done is tell me
my words mean nothing for you push past them
anyway

—April 26, 2016