Young Writers Society

disenchantment xiii

Shafts of autumn sunlight
Filter through the stained glass windows
Creating the illusion of warmth

I leaf through the book in my hands
Humming to myself
The remnants of summer
Are pressed into dictionary pages
Flowers and four-leaved clovers

Sometimes I sit on my bed
And a sadness washes the room
In indigo watercolor
As I remember something
I cannot quite grasp

The pastel patchwork of days
Travels on and on
Awaiting change
That never comes

disenchantment xiv

The backpack lands with a heavy thud
I watch as the tension
Unspools from your shoulders
And lands in a puddle on the wood floor.

I set the phone down in its charger
And cross the room to meet you
We embrace; we both had a hard day
My iron-cast head is drawn downward
My ink-pressed hands can no longer feel

I dip my fingers in darkness
And spread the ink across your eyes
Then mine
Learning how to see in the night is seldom easy,
Seldom painless

I tie my heart with crimson thread,
And yours with indigo
The stones that dangle from them
Don't drag us down,
They keep us grounded.

When we're drowning in the white-paper ocean
Of algebra tests, novel pages and sheet music
We can find the starlit hope inside
Release it with our lips and voices
And keep our heads above the current

disenchantment xv

I've passed the zenith of my life
Unnoticed
I flicker at the edges
Becoming part of a twilight world,
The dusk before the night
And as the sun sets, my soul shatters
The wind carries the pieces away
To burn bright memories in the hearts of others-
They never remembered me
While I was there.

disenchantment xvi

As the pink vinyl slowly spins
I wrap my fingers in tissues
So they don't fall off before I let go of this pencil
Gosh- will I ever let go of this pencil?
It hurts, it bruises
But nothing matters now
My pencil tip keeps punctuating my excitement
The dot only of an exclamation mark
Repeated over and over and over-

I need to change things.
My hand is moving impossibly fast, but-
I can't sit still.
I get up and jump around
My soul on fire with ambition
No one can stop me, I have goals
And so help me if no one else cares
Then I'll do it on my own

And once again my heart aches
For a place I've never been
For a home I've never lived in
I want to go home
If I put on my hat and walk out the door,
I can travel there in an instant.

disenchantment xvii

Running through the woods of your mind
I can so easily get lost
The trees are dark; they're dripping shadows
The rocks are bowed over ominously
Their faces overcast by a lip or a hood
The air lies hot and humid on my back
To take a breath in is to breathe in water
Dark shapes tear through the nights
And inhuman screams pierce the silence of tense breaths
I could swear the alien forest life
Pulses with my anxious, racing heart

Deep inside there's a sanctuary
Made of shards of bleached white bones
But it gets darker as you go
The air is so heavy it kills the lights
And the moaning of the trees prickles the hair on my arms
How sure can I be that they aren't human?
I can feel that it's close
Hear the song in the shadows
But the pathless woods move me in circles
Part of the enigma is getting there
See the fire through the trees?
See the fog start to slip away?
But when I arrive, the door is a puzzle-lock
So close to refuge, I let my eyes shut

disenchantment xviii

You were the catalyst for the downfall of friendship
Stealing me away on wings of witty words
And songs sung in soft baritone
Trilingual, you charmed me
With three different words for each of mine
We could talk about nothing
Two hours a night
I thought I was glad when you left
So I could live normally once more
But I can't tell now if I feel worse or the same
My emotions are choking me up

disenchantment xix

Pull everything out
Then put it all back
The guts of the room splayed out on the carpet
Ready for dissection

Just sort and stack and organize
Keep your hands busy
Turn the music up so loud
You can't hear your thoughts
(not those thoughts again)

In the glaring white lights
Of barren waiting rooms
You do things you wouldn't, shouldn't
You take out a sharpie and
Let the ink seep deep into your skin
Because there's no other way
To distract yourself from the truth

disenchantment xx

They cut down the big willow tree today
The one in the yard that's two houses away
I stood in shocked in horror as it breathed its last breath
Only a stray cat to gaze upon the old willow's death
It's empty on the horizon where it should be
Cropped out of life, and cut out of memory
Like a slapstick photoshop job, it's gone
Not even a stump to show where it's sawn
The skyline looks different now, it leaves me staring
I look in confusion for I've lost my bearing
I want to know when I will get a say
"Stop cutting down trees; stop cutting today!"
Now I realize with fear that I never may
But I can plant a seed that will grow up and stay.

disenchantment xxi

The record slowly revolves
On a coal black turntable
Its bright pink vinyl somehow calms me
Spinning webs and galaxies of music
And I float in a dizzy haze through the Milky Way of my mind
I'm andromeda, I reach towards my sister stars
But two things can never truly touch
The atoms hovering just little bits away

Who knows what's out there
When you read between the lines
Of charts and graphs and tables
Of some astronomer's notebook
Trying to find the facts behind true wonder
Maybe there's star dust, maybe there is diamond rain, maybe there is life
But even the non-living entities have a beginning and end
We are born in the Nebula of Orion, the cradle of stars

I am Cassiopeia
I am The Seven Sisters
I am Orion
I am the Swan
I am Ursa Major, Ursa Minor
I am the Persieds in August

We explode into supernovas and collapse into black holes
Dragging everything into ourselves
Pulling the galaxies into eventual collapse
The stars at the center spin wildly
The gravity increasing their velocities
Pulling them apart as they go
Faster and faster
F a s t e r and f a s t e r and f a s t e r
And f a s t e r
And f a s t e r -

And I realize the record is on silent endless loop
And I'm still grounded, here
And night and stars are so very far away.

disenchantment xxii

I can see the wave in the distance
About to come sweeping in upon me
But still I seat myself
On the couch, like throne
As I waste away my days
The last before I drown

I buried the locket
With the memories from last time
Trusting myself not to make
The same mistakes

I feel like I will make it-
This time
It will be different-
This time

It's always my first mistake

disenchantment xxiii

Driving in circles
I sing to myself
Of going away and
Coming home again

And those who
Had been my friends
Melted into strangers,
In my mind,
When I saw them again
(It's been a very long time)

I wonder if that happens
To everyone, once in a while
That we forget how to be social
With some people,
(Not others)
And we no longer
Wish for them to be our friends

And the world further complicates itself
Add a newly tied knot
And try to thread your way
Through the needle of life
(It gets harder as you go)
I feel more and more helpless

disenchantment xxiv

While trying to play a piano with four pedals
And carefully measuring up
My future with others'
(Is different always better?)
I used to feel indomitable
My friends invited themselves to a party
They made sure to take lots of pictures
('Because you couldn't be there')
And I cut myself off from them
For what seems like the hundredth time
And even now, I still can't tell
If it's better or worse
To be with humans, because each time
I'm lonely in a crowd, I'm lonely by myself
But I think that I'm finding
That life is just lonely, in all aspects
And it's easiest to be lonely
Alone.

disenchantment xxv

We aren't exactly friends anymore
The chemistry teacher is talking about you now
She just called you Leslie
(Which is, in a way, more my name than yours)
Even though your real name is-
A name I know well.
As well as I know mine.
Better.

She said the dry ice came from dead mice
Dead mice for the owls
I started laughing in my seat
Because the dead mice have lived-
I mean, they're dead-
In my freezer before.

When she mentions dry ice,
I'm laughing again
Because you probably have a ton of it
Just hanging around
You were always the safest dangerous person I knew
Building catapults
And raising snakes
I imagine what your face would look like now

Whether the class thinks I'm crazy
I will never know
I'm still laughing,
But there are tears in my eyes
I never wished you happy birthday
(Only a few weeks ago, I could still do it-
But I won't.)

All our good memories were from
Years and years ago
When you inadvertently
Saved me from those who would
Destroy my soul
(Their memories are less painful,
Especially with you to dull them)

We did everything together
But now I rarely see you
And when I do, it seems far too hard
To articulate
But if you want me to, I'll try.

disenchantment xxvi

The first signs of the apocalypse
Are showing themselves
Although everything seems ethereal
It will all end in fire
The black horizon already glows crimson

My friends are crying,
Alone,
And I'm alone too
Musing over what I learned in driving
The instructor told us everything
Not about driving,
But relationships,
Cheating,
Lies.

Maybe if I think about the lives of others,
I'll distract myself from my own downfall.

disenchantment xxvii

The night was chemistry,
And only that
It was calming, secure
I locked myself inside
The cathedral of my studies
A place of refuge
A place of safety
Built with walls of notebooks,
Papers and labs, old assignments, journals
A calculator had a sacred place
Atop three periodic tables
And my hands were armed
With a dozen sharp pencils
As I dug deeper in.
I tried not to miss her.
It's only been a day.