Young Writers Society

1
I'd hate to think I'm
missing out on something you
and the rest of them are doing
or thinking or feeling
because it might be wonderful or
it might be thrilling or
it might be dull and
it might hurt in that way
that can't be put into words and
every day you're struggling to put one foot
ahead of the rest.
I could wait until it comes to me
naturally
next week or
next month or
next year but I would hate
to think you are doing this now
and feeling this now while I'm off
buried under something less important.

If you expected more
than this from me
you were wrong.

There are two things here that are working so fabulously and that is this sense of vulnerability and realness and truth in the voice of this narrator, any metaphor shoved in would feel hollow in comparison. The second thing is how it so captures this very human conflict that plays out immediately for me like yes, yes, I can relate! I can see myself. I love when I can feel in the shoes of the experience. Brilliant!

2
The ash trees have started
to come down in the city;
they have beetles in their stomachs
that crack arms over neighborhood
streets, shatter car windows, and leave
shallow holes of sawdust in the treelawns.

My street is more crowded now,
full of car wheels and rooftops and strips
of blue sky. The holes left are bigger
than the trees.

3
They say she jumped from the top of the old rock mill.
A miracle, they called it, when she climbed from the pool
in her bare feet with that flowered cotton dress pasted
to her legs and algae in her hair like she'd been born of the air
and the cottonwood fluff melted on the smooth grey stone.

You stand at the top of the top of the old rock mill
and look down the twelve feet of jagged rock wall
imagining all the ways your body will break on its way
to that cottonwood pool. It's a myth, you think, the girl who
walked out of the water and if you follow her from the ledge you will die.

You breathe wind tunneled against wet rock
and the drop makes you dizzy
but your knees are weak and
you want to jump anyway
just to see.

4
I like the way the clocks in our place
tick slightly out of time: one, then the other, then the first and over again in
off-time conversation about the hour

(I wonder when you're gone if I'll finally
understand what they say)

5
[Ursa Major] n. She who is greater
carries the little one folded in her
arms wrapped tight around her so
she does not forget how real it is
to be [Casiopeia] adj. Fair as in fairness, to mean
beauty is outdated, cast into, upon stars
where [Pisces] v. To be together has not
always meant the cord drawn taught
two things buzzing like bees or fish with wings
in two directions. It used to be one,
the same goal ahead [Vulpecula] adv. I longed to hold you between my teeth to
keep you close where you couldn't be lost;
what you asked me had an answer once but
I'm afraid I swallowed every last word

4's premise is so clear. I can hear it and feel the space it fills!

6
What do you call it when a person
who held your words in their hands --
told you this is true in a way only you,
you thinking, you dreaming, you putting
letters down one after the other could put together --
and watched you across a desk, a long
classroom table, a page of words exchanged
is gone? What do you call it when you know
a person less than you know their handwriting
-- here is where we need a little more, clarify
this image it could be a powerful one, this
here is your heart it has so much strength  -- is in charge of students no more than he is in charge of
his own stomach where
he thought he'd taken back control until
all he could stomach were fruit smoothies
and hope. Nine percent of your time spent in a
classroom with someone you'd consider
nine perfect of the rest of your life -- in the
scheme of things -- but nine percent of your
permission to write is more than just a
nine percent chance of survival. Sometimes
nine percent is enough and others it's
just a little shy of hope.

7
listen for the girls in their
four-poster bed
fingers intertwined like
sisters whispering in the dark

(do you love me? and will you
prove it if I ask?)

listen for the girls when
they creep across the lawn
to the hives where the bees sleep;
they lick honey off each other's thumbs

(you are so sweet, taste sweeter
with the dew)

listen for the girls when
one gets bored; the story goes
she will ask the other to the attic where
the window hangs open and ask

(do you wonder, if you love me, if you'll fly
or if you'll fall?)

8
A girl is whispering inside
an apricot. Do you think my mother
loves me when she says I'm sweet like
honey or does she only mean I'm soft,
slick like water, can't hold myself together.

Tonight, an old woman will
appear and give you the meaning
of life. (Who would trust a girl with
sugar-stained cheeks or the man
who leaves magazines on your doorstep
to tell you the truth) It's the perfect ruse
who would take the lines in her face as clay
forced sideways by hands rather than time.

Twenty-one metaphysicians imagine
a face into existence. Yet no matter
how I try I can't forget the way your eyes
shattered when I told you I was gone.
How did you not feel the way I
seeped between your teeth?

9
There's dirt under my fingernails because
I'm trying to make life in a clay pot on my porch
where there's not much sun despite it being in the
name. I'd just like to raise something lovely, to wake up
with green beneath my eyelids, think if I could do this
how hard could the rest of it be?

Oh man... For some reason 9 makes my heart clench.. Why am I so emotionally affected by that? It's just so... so sad.

10
I planted a garden in my kitchen sink
with tomato skin and wilted romaine and
an onion that's already sprouted green where
I kept it on the shelf by the radiator. It's too warm
in my kitchen; bread molds early and potatoes go
soft like butter under the butcher's block island
where my pie tins gather dust. The water comes out
the wrong faucet, hot where it should be cold and I
think if everything else is backward maybe here
I can make something grow.

11
I want to hang crystals from my
shower head so that every time I
stand there with the water too hot
and the window cracked I can buff my
skin with the sharp edges of refracted light.

I'd hate to think I'm missing out too! I'm going backwards into catching up on your thread and nine is literally soul-crushing and ten is somewhat nostalgic for some reason? Nonetheless, both are lovely.