Young Writers Society

The metaphor you've captured in #25 is unexpected, and super-fitting because it's supposed to be a horrible year for allergies, and so I am having strong emotions about pollen right about now.

#26 is just haunting and especially so just thinking of the vast generations it can apply to. Just doing a teeny bit of genealogy research begins making my mind spin when thinking about the "what ifs" and the "who could these people have been if x, y, z didn't happen, who would I have been?" -- and I imagine that deeply rooted sense of ancestry has got to be amplified to a way greater degree for people with a closer connection to it religiously or with heritage coming from people who have experienced "plague years".

#27 is just wow! The internal questioning expressed is really powerful, and feels like sort of where the NaPo was leading in a way? Questioning how the past fits into the present, what can be held on to, what still is a burden etc.

These lines especially resonated: "how to not know what part of yourself
you’re supposed to love or hate in one easy step"

^^ Wow!

#28
sometimes all a day needs is a foggy morning
and cool breeze, and a cat that doesn’t
smell like toilet water curled up, asleep

#29
why are filled pages on paper
harder to wrap my mind around
than on a screen?

#30
nostalgia
the smell of paper and ink
and the magic i’ve never been able to recreate

#31
an introvert raised on chatrooms and aim
(how to learn to type in one easy step)
is more connected to friends half a world away
than the coworker fifteen minutes across town

#32
cold april nights
feel like summer in the city

#33
the plague years
the air is crisp and golden
and everyone is afraid

#34
the plague years
the birds have taken over the sky
and wage war against the squirrels

#35
the plague years
30 days in
and no one has died
(from unnatural causes)

#36
the plague years gothic
300 new books to read:
reread the same fanfic for the third time
(this week)

#37
the plague years gothic
other people are lava
and the ground is poisoned

#38
april starts in rain
and ends in summer

#39
the plague years
the only thing missing
is darkness

the only thing missing
is earthquakes

#40
this is what june feels like:
warm sun. cold breeze
and the threat of summer still to come

Mesh, I can't get over how evocative and cathartic these snippets are. You say so much about what it feels like to live through this pandemic in such few words. I keep coming back to "and no one has died / (from unnatural causes)" because of how perfectly it captures the strange irony that is everything about COVID-19 and the world's response to it.

#41
dear pollen
you smell
make me sneeze
please leave
bye

#42
the fans are still dusty from last fire season
(beginnings turn in to endings)
with a stutter that never quite recovered
from two seasons’ raining ash

i think that last one just. like. died.

#43
the plague years
how many reruns can you watch
before desperation sets in
(we’re at six weeks and counting)

#44
if there is a cure for summer heat
and hiding things that bloom and buzz
and surround the world in misery,
send it my way, before we declare defeat

#45
the plague years
death is imminent
as space gets smaller

as time goes on
space gets smaller
likelyhood of murder
rises exponentially

#46
the plague years gothic
numbers are make-believe -
we all die in the end

(i kinda like #51 just as it is. xD I think it sums up everything nicely)


#47
sometimes i remember study sessions in the only building on campus that overlooked the green and how small everyone seemed from only two stories up in a building that housed the biggest mess of classrooms and admin and study space no one used unless it was an hour break between identical grey rooms, only distinguishable by the two that had windows at the back you were never able to face [we’ll discount the one room that appeared third year with windows to the side in a theory class that was more about psychology than literature taught by an ex-banker more at home with Joyce and de Beauvoir than Chaucer; though both have their low points] and the systems that only half worked for the professors that could barely turn on a computer and liked to screen films no one had heard of or can even remember in pitch-black rooms with muffled light that tried to sneak in under the door.

the light coming in came from the green, where we used to build a sukkah in the fall until it was beaten down too many times

campus is closed, now; it’s been ten years since I stepped on site, and the building across the green with the best fried chicken in the county and only open dining/study/lecture space [they actually had a Jewish speaker, once, and all of Hillel showed up front and center with rows between us and the goyium] is now another marketing claim of progress instead of slightly off-track quiet along the sideline of chaos still firmly rooted in the growing pain of 60s splendor.

#48
you can smell the pollen drifting along with sun-lit bees

#49
the plague years gothic:
the only tv worth watching
(read: has new content)
is the bestworst thing to happen
to reality TV:
masked singer, with Gordon Ramsey

#50
the plague years gothic
the internet’s down

#51
the plague years
no one knows