Young Writers Society

you have been dissociating
straining
________ against
bonds that feel too tight
for the soul you were given, the
weight of your heart plunging straight
to the bottom of the ocean when you
only want to be among the stars
(a light that is hard to see, hard
___________ to care about)

you take a breath and try to swim but
the ocean
________ is inside
your lungs and there are too
___________ many
________________ drops
to ever cough them up

— April 1, 2018

memes teach statistics better
than any class you ever received,
the concept of spiders so creepy
you pay attention, but so ridiculous
you can gloss it over, the information
getting in beyond filters and applied
over and over and over in new concepts
until you understand outliers are not
to be counted, lest they skew the data
in the wrong direction

(you know this is how brainwashing works;
they tell you half truths until you cannot tell)

you read it over and over and over until
you can tell yourself: 'everyone wants you dead'
factoid is a statistical error.
your mother, who has been trying to kill you
since before you were born
is an outlier that should not have been counted

— April 2, 2018

idealism is a trophy case, passed down
from culture to capes, from church to
followers, from mother to daughter and
you do not understand why you should save them
why trophies labeled with pretty words should
fill up your ribs and crowd out
the dolls you have collected that represent
Yours, your skull etched with words
you should fight for but you cut your tongue
on their jagged edges because nobody ever told you
those pretty words mean hurting somebody
no matter how good those words are supposed to be

— April 3, 2018

control, noun: the power to influence or
direct people's behaviour or
the course of events.

you grip tight to those you love, mine
rolling off your tongue with every drop
of blood your nails draw when it's
too tight, pointing out paths unseen and
comparing them to roads too roughly travelled,
giving tools and warnings (watch
the rock to your right, it has my blood on it
and I do not want it to collect yours)

control, verb: determine the behaviour or
supervise the running of

you know you should not tell them what path
to walk but that gives them no right for them
to do the same for you, titles dodged because
how dare you tell me where to go, hands
fisted around nothing since that path is one
you have chosen to walk alone, nails digging
into your own palms and

i know the blood of the covenant is thicker
than the water of the womb, but you entered
that pact with somebody else and besides
you know i'm not religious

— April 4, 2018

facebook is an exercise in patience.

some people's walls are a shrine to their ideals
their values and jokes they only care about enough
to share even if they're not 100% right; it's
an inherently selfish thing, scraps of
parts of your identity plastered up where
the world can see them, where you can
set your focus and it is hard to forget how walls
were used in your house. every space dedicated
to the future, the present, the collection
of perfect you wanted your life to be. ideals
plastered where they could be given attention but
otherwise forgotten lest you dream too much—
just never forget your dreams were perfect
because god only gave you everything just right
and if it wasn't perfect it wasn't worth accepting
even if a friend request came out of the blue and
you are too in love to care

the problem with walls is you can spend so long
staring at them you forget that not everything there
is true

— April 5, 2018

you wake up and your inbox is
a constant reminder of everything wrong
in your life; assigning tasks in monotone,
the space too easy to forget why it is
you collect a cheque. the house
is a mess because it is all too much and
you know there is no escape, every
job will have parts you hate and
every project has boring parts, the
metaphor not lost on you. to make
one step is to make dozens and
they all feel too big because one step is
never just one, instead it is a snowball
on a hill and gravity will do the rest
except you are not pushing

you are standing in its path and
even though you can swim, you
do not know if you can keep up
with an avalanche

— April 6, 2018

everyone knows fight or flight—
fight, keep going, keep pouring
energy into pushing forward, escaping;
flight, running, getting away,
escaping. everything about finding
a way out, about finding a path
that maybe would be safe this time

but those are only if you believe
there is a scrap of dignity left. if
the end is inevitable, then best to freeze
and face it painlessly

— April 7, 2018

a ritual: throw the stone
that reminds you of your mother
off the bridge and into the river
instead of what else you wanted
to go in the water; take
the impulse with it. tell yourself
you are never going back there again.
remind yourself you are never
going back there again, until every
cell in your body is crying
about how there never was a safety net
and you have not removed anything

a ritual: draw a bath and turn the water black
with a bath bomb called secret arts and
remind yourself you were born in water
you can be reborn there, too

— April 8, 2018

you do not know if your fever sweats
are stress, sickness, or both. you
keep telling yourself you have so much
to unlearn and yet

you know, logically, everything she
threw at you was a projection but
hearing she didn't let you care for others
because it meant you weren't giving her
what she felt entitled to sends you back
back. back. back. you try to forget what
a flashback feels like because every time
it takes your breath away and

you are sitting in your computer chair
hearing about how you should charge
for caring about others. you are sitting
in your computer chair hearing about how
you should never get too close because
then they will see who you are with her
and it isn't pleasant to be around you.
you are hearing everything she deserves
for what she has given up for you and

you tell your friends you are replaceable
a cog in a wheel that turns a machine
mass produced, everyone like this enough
your own perspective doesn't matter and

you make a list of everything she has done
for you and stare at its starkness, everything
a cog in a wheel where nobody saw you, a
mirrorless house where you never see
your own reflection, Mulan playing in the background
and there is a lump at your throat but you don't know why

you ask if this is where your words come from
your friend replies
"probably"

you do not know if fever is anxiety, sickness
or poison bleeding out

— April 9, 2018

there is a twisted relief you feel
at not waking up so early
you see dawn. everyone told you
as a teenager how early morning
was the most productive time, the
time when you beat the world
(funny how everyone seems to start
so early, how are you truly winning)

the world is a monochrome of
too harsh white and hospital blue
an attempt at purity for a soul
painted black by the night

— April 10, 2018

horror is not an emotion
you deal with particularly well. you
trip over the steps it takes
to get there, working backwards from
i care about what you think to
why did i do something i knew
would hurt you, waiting for
repercussions you know are coming,
you know better an echo that
never seems to stop

— April 11, 2018

dear straight christians:

i wish i could make this funny, dry wit punctuating
morbidity, something light in what is otherwise
a sea of protest signs and hellfire. but
twenty five years of hearing the same has
worn down every ounce of sympathy
until all i am left with is asking why you have decided
god's will looks like a series of do not enter signs,
at best a kind hand reaching out with a cross
behind your back to save me and at worst
another person on the street because "god
doesn't make mistakes" means "our image of you
is correct." where ideals are more important
than humanity, where loving means ideas
over people, where ideas of people rule
instead of god and

with all due respect
fuck you

— April 12, 2018

**claps**

Well written!!

you do not know how to measure
what consists of a first kiss.

the first time you ever found somebody
who you wanted to press yourself
against, you lived a thousand miles
apart and you told him, after
he typed out a kiss, that
this would not be your first because
pixels didn't count

(you regret it, now, after he
took the the affection he used to
give so freely to his grave)

the second time you had somebody
in flesh and blood but you also
had a request to make it like
the kiss you had dreamed about,
permissive. a single phrase spoken—
forgotten, before she took one too many
and you wanted it all to stop

(you now tell anyone that
if you have to take medication to
be calm enough
it isn't the right time)

how can you tell if you have been kissed
twice, or never, all because something about it
wasn't right enough to call it yours

— April 13, 2018