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Young Writers Society


mama didn't know the forest was magic



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541 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 370
Reviews: 541




User avatar
541 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 370
Reviews: 541
Sun Apr 01, 2018 7:18 pm
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Lauren2010 says...



I ace of cups

A century or more of rain on leaves
dampens the house she built. Among trees
with chimes knit to the branches; old silver spoons
and tin cups and faded ribbon worked into the bark.

She found the girl in a clap of thunder and waited
for the next wave to roll over the trees
and erase them both in a flash of light.

When it rained in the forest,
it fell like a song.
Got YWS?
  





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541 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 370
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Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:02 am
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Lauren2010 says...



II seven of cups

To grow old among centuries is to stand
on the precipice of time, bound by wrist
and ankle to the earth while the years go
tumbling over like lovers lost to memory

(it is not a curse to watch,
though it has all gone ragged
with straining, desperate
warning of the fall;
the curse is that for each one
that turns anew I cannot help
but long to live her.)
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Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:16 am
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Lauren2010 says...



III king of swords

Death is a wolf with an old ham radio;
you know the signal like the rushing in
your ears that doctor told you not to
spend too much time worrying over --
breaker one a fool doth approach
your throne
-- you knew it could not
be the rushing of your own blood but
someone tuned to the frequency of your
mind.

Spoiler! :
tbh had more in mind for this one but I actually think it feels good to leave it there
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Thu Apr 05, 2018 3:46 am
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Lauren2010 says...



IV ace of swords

At the beginning, everything was sharp,
clear like glass or the surface of the mirror
lake where the Wolf (Death, they call him,
or Sebastian as he prefers) tunes his radio.
What I asked was clear; I wanted all of it,
each moment that swirled like mist just outside
my grasp. Death grinned and a galaxy spun
in the gaps between his teeth. He granted
what I asked and oh, did he deliver.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 3:25 pm
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Lauren2010 says...



V six of cups

I do not visit the mirror
lake, though it is not
because I can't.

I do not visit the mirror
lake, though I long to trail
fingertips through memory
cast beneath the glass.

Were I to visit the mirror
lake, it would be the solace
of every spring morning and
the quiet magic of every candle
burned through on my windowsill
and every hand to ever still my
age-old heart, and I would forget
what it meant to be captive.

Were I to visit the mirror
lake, oh, how beautiful
my life might be.
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Sat Apr 07, 2018 4:56 am
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Lauren2010 says...



VI the hierophant

Come near, girl, the first lesson is this:
take the silver spoons from your mother's
hope chest, while she rests midday in
the salon where one day you'll receive
more suitors than you care to imagine.

You may bury them in the rose garden
for two more years of innocence, or
split them one beneath the kitchen window
the other in your father's drawer for a
long and happy marriage.

Or you may take them to the forest and
offer your mother's silver with your father's
genes and ask for lesson two, but here's
the catch: the test is always harder than
the lessons when every question is a trick.
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Sat Apr 07, 2018 4:42 pm
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Lauren2010 says...



Spoiler! :
full disclosure I pulled the ace of swords first, but I didn't want to repeat a card so I shuffled and pulled again and I feel like this is my punishment.


VII death

I drink to drown the taste of glass
between my teeth; when Sebastian
extended the tube from his radio I
held it in my mouth, the filament
burning a galaxy against my tongue.

Centuries past I can still feel
the inertia hot in my mouth;
I thought I leapt but I had been
pushed, falling before I had even
thought to run for the ledge.
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Sun Apr 08, 2018 6:26 pm
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Lauren2010 says...



VIII six of wands

This house I've built is everything
I promised the girl in hand-me-down
petticoats and dreams too big for
the world she was given. I am the
keeper of the gate to the forest,
younger than the old ones but I have
crossed the impossible years to hang
chimes from my trees and collect
rainwater in cracked teacups and dance
in the light of this moon so different
from the one I had once known.
I am the witch in the forest, the one
they tell stories of at campfires and
brings hard candies that taste like
spring. I ease colic in their babies and
bring salves for scraped knees and
clear their way out of this world.

(She is touchless, legend, alone and
does not expect the tale etched
upon her heart to be rewritten by
something so inconsequential as the
girl who'll wash in hot as summer rain.)
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Wed Apr 11, 2018 3:09 am
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Lauren2010 says...



IX eight of cups

Some days I am the
rain barrel beneath
the broken gutter--

old leaves, a
scrap of tin foil,
mosquitos growing
in the puddle underneath

--it hasn't rained in weeks.
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Wed Apr 11, 2018 3:11 am
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Lauren2010 says...



X ace of wands

Take a word and bury it
in the tree by the mill
where girls build fairy
houses in the roots and
chase boys into the branches
and share cigarettes over
shared headphones.

(There is magic in a word in
an attempt to build refuge it
will last for centuries, beyond
the time they'll know your name.)
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Wed Apr 11, 2018 5:17 am
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Ventomology says...



I don't know much about tarot, but I enjoy the titles and the poems in general! They all feel very magical, and it seems like it'd take a bit of dedication and creative thinking to stick to a theme like this.

Best of luck with the rest of the month! You can do it!
"I've got dreams like you--no really!--just much less, touchy-feeley.
They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny
on an island that I own, tanned and rested and alone
surrounded by enormous piles of money." -Flynn Rider, Tangled
  





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Gender: Female
Points: 370
Reviews: 541
Thu Apr 12, 2018 1:03 am
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Lauren2010 says...



Spoiler! :
Thanks so much @Ventomology! I'm glad you enjoy them <3


XI knight of coins

On Sunday you'll walk
to the market with your
basket of herbs, dried,
and tonics both sweet
and savory for smelling
or tasting or burying in
the garden of the man
you're trying to leave.

On Sunday you'll sit
in the market under
the tent you bought
last summer at the
folding table you found
in the shed and take
money from women
you knew as girls.

On Sunday you'll promise
remedies for heartache and
dry skin and dreams left
unfulfilled by an ancient
sense of obligation and
this will keep you in food
and heating gas and your
own obligation that keeps
you turning like cogs in
a clock kept turning by
no more than a frequency
spun by a wolf on the radio.
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Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:31 am
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Cadi says...



I love following all the threads you've driven through the whole series of poems - like the wolf, who keeps showing up. I'm getting a sense of slightly unearthly magic from all of these, and it's great.
"The fact is, I don't know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn't collapse when you beat your head against it." --Douglas Adams
  





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Gender: Female
Points: 370
Reviews: 541
Fri Apr 13, 2018 2:07 am
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Lauren2010 says...



Spoiler! :
@Cadi <333333


XII queen of wands

If mama had known the forest
was magic, she might not have
stopped the cab she'd called in
while crouched in the front coat
closet so her husband wouldn't hear,
but she'd felt sick and needed the
air. She might not have left her
cellphone on the back seat.

If mama had known the forest
was magic, she might not have
started to run when it started to
rain. She might have let the water
soak her through. She might have
started walking back toward town.
She might have thought to herself
what an overreaction.

If mama had known the forest
was magic, she might not have
climbed through the open window
of the cabin set back in the woods
off of route twenty-seven because
a spark had been struck from the
ashes kindled from too many years
left simmering on low.

But she hadn't known
the forest was magic
and so she called
and so she stopped
and so she wandered
and so she climbed
and so mama met Esther
and so everything changed.
Got YWS?
  








There is nothing more radical or counter-cultural, at the moment, than laying down one’s cynicism in favour of tender vulnerability.
— John Green