Young Writers Society

XII.



your answering machine is a temporary message to the world:
i am not home right now, but i will return again sometime.

i've called it four times since yesterday,
counting the dial tone backwards until it starts to sound like your laugh.
no answer yet, but i'm holding out hope.

you promised you'd come back, and then
packed all your pinky swears in a box and mailed it to me—
lettered in your neat handwriting: stop calling or else.

i just thought if i called one more time, you just might pick up.
i guess that's what i get for using your hair as the basis of all my dreams.
for using the way your hands moved over my eyelids as the reason to dream in the first place.

i'll stop calling when you answer, i promise.

XIII.

if i'm truthful with myself, my back lacks the strength it needs to stand up straight.
i am a never ending curve, a bow bent backwards and out of shape.
you always reminded me, shoulders back, chest out, eyes forward.


///
in progress

XIV.



the year that everyone cried, i walked 400 miles up and down the boardwalk,
searching for the names we wrote in the sand on our last day of summer vacation.

...

the year that everyone cried, i didn't shed a damn tear.

...

the year that everyone cried,
my ghost counted all the ways i broke myself
to fit into the box i mailed to you on our very last day.
labeled handle with care.


///
in progress

XV.



the stars will always explode only in each other's eyes for you and i—
so when your ghost left my skin, i still felt your breath against my hair
and couldn't quite shake the feeling you were just waiting for me to stumble,
so you could take over and make my bones yours again.

when my heart finally lifted off your palm, i knew you'd feel the weight of honesty and truth finally vanish— a balance returned to our universe.
off our axis, you and i, always out of orbit.
no longer would my world be based on the curve of your smile and the way the morning light reflected off your eyebrows when i kiss your softest bits of skin.

i made three promises to you the year that everyone cried
and i felt your nails dig into my ribs, no longer a piano but a canvas for all the regrets i had surrounding your most innocent intentions.

by the end of the summer, i'd packed by pinky swears and shipped them back to you.
labeled: stop calling or else.

my summer shower, my winter sky—
a forever black hole i was always meant to sink in to—
it's for you all my planets align,
but only when i get stuck connecting the constellations in your eyes.

XVI.


by the end of the summer, i'd packed by pinky swears and shipped them back to you.
labeled: stop calling or else.
all the promises made beneath your floorboards creaking into place,
waiting to suffocate you.


in progress