Young Writers Society

This is my NaPo thread yay

I've not been able to access a keyboard other than on my phone since April started, so these are all late but whatever.

Posting the ones I already have typed up first instead of posting them in the order I wrote them because I'm lazy.

Also I'm adding pictures to these. All of the photos in this thread are unedited unless otherwise stated.

1: Chronocentric



Say that time was not something you let him pour down your spine
the way the beetles crawl down leaves and splice twigs together
in woven crowns like daisy chains
to chip away at the block of summer-
time. You let time go,
as if it were nothing.
Inconsequential.
You strolled through days in a daze surrounded by summer haze
and the ways that you could always seem to find new life in the shade,
hidden away for some cool longing to drift it out and caress...
It was as if you were chronostationary, chronocentric, especially spacial
as hours and stars and yes, even beetles whirl around you
and you laugh off the waterfalls and the twistings of the grass knots
because time was something you rolled your ankles on
and trailed your fingers through while he poled you along
like the old movies, under the parasol that caused so little shade
to fall on the face that always used to be brushed with yellow from dandelion pollen.
You took harps and restrung them through your ribs so every breath was a ballad
and every sigh a sorrow, a requiem for birds that fly no more
or the withered pansies in the front yard that you forgot to notice while they bloomed
because time was imaginary, a figment, the mirage of a rainbow that disappeared whenever you called someone over to look at it. So you forgot to remember to look for them, to chase them, to search for the gold at the end of them, just like you forgot that toads bring warts and dandelions wishes when the're made up of soft white stars. You never did see a shooting star the way you always thought you'd catch one and find your prince, but now all you have is time dribbling down your back because he couldn't care enough to soak your hair in it.

2

She has a knowledge now
of so much longing,
nostalgia waxing old and aging,
the fine wine,
made not of the fresh red grapes of Concord,
but of the blotchy browning shrivled apples
that fall on the burnt yellow grasses
at the end of August.
Their smell, the sweet rot, the sparrows’ songs and the scents of animal musk, the taste of water out of the freshly-filled rain barrel and a hint of mildewing alfalfa floating on the summer breeze: these twist and combine and form the endless melody that plays whenever someone utters the word “home.”

3



Have you seen the sadness that hollowed out her eyes?
She played games with fire until she got burned,
and yet she kept playing.
There were days she was drowning in the slow seeping flames
that ground her spine to dust
and made the darkness drip down her throat,
filling her lungs with the tar of misery, a byproduct of despair.
She is building a song made of sand
that keeps falling through her fingers–
Have you heard it?

4



Morning chill placid lake and scenic mountain grandeur the snapping of a twig skipping stones and sliding silt filtered sunshine green leaves and golden.

Montana rocks like candy rock mountain remnants or jewels sparkling like something commonplace never does. Rainbow pebbles and silver slender fish darting toward a fisherman’s lure, knowing they must be thrown back.

Autumn memories or maybe the ghost of fall not driven out yet by spring’s exuberance.

5



The way the soil smells
and the buds peeking through,
wondering at a silent threat of snow and the way no one quite believes that it is actually warm yet have their coats draped over forearms.
But spring is screaming with her usual vibrancy.
Petaled frills and windy chills
and a woodchipped cusion for a sleep
in the fledgling sunshine.

6




Light filters through the leaves
rich with sweet shine
as laze hangs heavy
over the leather couches
as we talk in familiar patterns,
comfortable, a blanket of words.
A spring breeze sways flyaway hairs
that were missed by the rubberband.
Gooseflesh finally absorbed
with softly billowing fresh linen curtains
and the residue of steam
from a recent hot shower.
The greying spring evening sun,
not quite golden yet,
creates a soft sunwake on maple floors
as the stonework of the cool fireplace
nestles together,
creating a silence never noticed.

7: Sensory Welding

He was golden and silvery,
coppery and iron and leaden,
my metallurgy.

When we kissed, he tasted gold.
He was the honey that sweetly dripped, dribbled,
liquid oozing, rolling over my tongue
like it was straight from the hive,
making my eyes light up
like the sun at sunset
so bright and golden.

Wherever we walked, he looked silver.
He was the silver
shine tinting the rain at dusk
that made everything feel clean,
sterilized, doctors' instruments
or my mother's silverware
that she keeps rolled away in a drawer
which we are
Not Allowed To Touch.

Lounging next to him, he smelled copper.
His scent was a coppery pinching of the throat
that sharpened my nerve endings
and cut my tear ducts.
Like old pennies or fresh blood
or the keys he lost in my garden
many nights ago.

Lying near him, he sounded Iron.
His screams at midnight are rusted
and metal gratings, grinding and groaning,
and all that iron moaning
like the wind that screeches through the graveyard
and around the mouths of the broken churchbells.

Held under his grasp, he felt leaden.
His five-o-clock shadow was uncut metal
that wore away at the skin of my palms
and his heart was encased
in a cocoon of barbed wire.
The way he held his hands were crows
whose beaks scratched against the dawn sky,
setting it bleeding
from the ache of it all,
and his sensuous metallurgy
alloyed me into a ring
forever worn around his finger.

8

Or maybe she flew away while no one was watching. Her mind was quite flighty, you know, and that’s the only way out of this town. Taking the train just doesn’t cut it these days. You need the burst of rocket fuel and the whining whir of turbines anymore.
Perhaps she sprouted feathers and did the job herself. That one was always so independent, and she always had a fascination with those dirty magpies, what a pestering lot.
Whatever the case, she’s gone. To somewhere brighter, hopefully.

9



Showers ahead shown by circles plopped
into the dust on my car
or the rings around rings in the lake
Petrichor smells dry, strangely enough
but his cologne reeked of ozone.

I always smiled at the bright darkness of storms passing by in the east, heading south,
and the way the sun was in the west already
and all the houses sparkled with sun
while the sky behind them loomed
dark and forbidding.

And he told me once that rain was the only thing he lived for in the springtime. When I asked him about it later he wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t look at me.

The way the rain quenches the risings of the dust storms from out of the barely-plowed fields, and the way rain on my skin makes me feel cleaner than soap and realer than life.

10
He was all scotch and smoke rings, all piercings and tattooed skin, the gate to my backyard like the bulldog or pitbull or just bulls in the pits of his eyes and the way he smiled all sharpteeth and brittle the way bones splinter and his voice was marrow leaking or dripping melted on my skin silent laughter or smirks at the back of my head and he was always there even when he wasn’t there because I could feel the gooseprickle on my arms like all the needles from the tattooist or piercer or druggie, smoking up my curtains and he drunkenly breaks my lamp and I just now noticed: he has a golden tooth…

11
She tied your thoughts around her finger
to save for later
while on she went to dream
& still her dreams are endless, endless, endless....

12
tell me the lie that took it all out of your hands and dribbled your new life onto the countertops along with the topsoil of another day’s harvest.
lookie here, with the way dopamine seems to ooze out of the cracks and your cheeks are filled with hydrogen now and I think you’ve begun to float away with that peculiar method of yours…

13
panic heartthrob in my septum, at the base, a puppeteer of diaphragms and atriums. jittering fingers and eyes rolling, panic. sheer panic. the buzz of a television while I feel sick to my stomach, my blood alternatively boiling and freezing. I think I’m going blind, or at least the veins in my eye will grow into a forest, reach further into my vision and strangle my pupils. strobes of darkreddarkreddarkred striking matches but instead of sulfur, I smell fear…

14
sadness encroaching
like the spiders in the rain barrel
that you left empty on tuesday morning.
you wore me down and wore me around
like a new face prime for picking,
a mask molded of all the loss I felt
when i looked into your eyes.

let your lips form the words,
but let them die there, hanging,
lingering, unspoken.
for i never want to hear them:
just see them on your mind as your lips
caress every syllable.
i loved the shape of them
and the shapes around
those silent words' edges.
I'd gather them together
as a weaver gathers in the threads
or a farmer threshes golden wheat,
so too would I enfold your words to me.

But you left me empty-armed,
with not even a spider to my name.
Just the dust blown in off the trail you walked on,
dust that seemed to be made just for peeking through
to see if you were glancing back.