Young Writers Society

15

her name is beauty, and she never listened to a single thing you said.
taken to the low lights where the crawlers hide their dark faces,
she had you feast on pond scum and spread gutter mud over your eyes.
blackwater is the nectar of the gods, she whispers as the grit crunches between your teeth.
you are crying now as she is screaming.
she is the painted moth, spreading her dust and scales so thick you begin to asphyxiate.
she is wrapping her brittle arms around your chest that is shuddering for lack of air, and she murmurs into your neck:
you can never let go.

16



there are no streetlamps on the drive home
and the rain seems feeble as it speckles my windshield.
spring has sprung (with the forsythias all bright-eyed),
but it has left me behind
in the darkness that encases the street where I live.
I look out at the city, and how its light longs to burst through to the stars,
but is trapped, bumping up against the clouds.
I think of you, and the way you are so bright, I think my street wouldn’t need streetlamps
if you were walking down it,
holding my hand.

17



The first true words ever spoken
were not shouted from a mountaintop.
They did not rumble the Earth
nor did they define a discourse on philosophy.
They were whispered, fervently,
a desperate hope,
“Let us give names to these beauties around us. Let us know together:
rock, tree, bird,
stream, deer, sand,
eyes, hands, lips…”
And names were hushed and secret things,
that gave a shape to a world unshapen,
unmolded. They were a knowledge
passed between two.
“Yes, rock, tree, bird,
stream, deer, sand,
ache, longing, want,
love, despair, home…”
the language unfolded like a symphony
and a dance, with new secrets to learn everyday.
They build a house of words to shelter from the unknown.
“dropped, blood, heartache,
missing, confusion, terror…”
With words to define the unknown, calamities could be grasped.
The world, so wild and raging,
could be reduced to a series of marks
on a page…