Young Writers Society

trains and trams and buses,
stop. dusty sun-shafts slant
through my brain, I blink --
was Before the dream or
am I dreaming now?

sometimes, I think I live more fully in writing
than in life.


zugzwang (2021) (half complete)
tacenda (2020)
paroxysm (2019)
solivagant (2018)
evanescence (2017)
disenchantment (2016)

rêvasser i (le rêve de neige en avril)


the passage of the train leaves a smudge of iron and
smoke on the horizon, and through the blurred glass
the green hills turn to grey, then white,
like the countryside is aging before my eyes;
first frost on the ground, we travel back in time
to winter, to a forgotten childhood;
the snowflakes begin to fall and the train interior is lit
by warm yellow lamps and upholstered seats, watching
mist rise off of rivers and tree branches shiver.

it’s a dream I never knew I dreamed of.

and as soon as I think that, it’s over,
time un-pauses and we move
forward, again, the snowflakes turn to
rain and the sky stays as gray
and train wheels grind through
what remains of the frost,
turning it to slush on the rails
as we slide by like a sigh.

and maybe it is a dream, because it’s april, not december,
because printed on the train window is the text:
“Laissez-vous rêver” and maybe I did.

maybe I did.

rêvasser ii (insensible)


Things slip from fine to finished so easily, the way a small gift
gently separates itself from your hand and doesn’t fall,
not that you can see, but is lost in a breath.

Outside a sea of snowflakes and pink timbered houses and
hearts, but your body is numb and immobile so you’re listening to
“Phantom Limb” as your face heats up and tears prick at your eyes,
chapped lips mouthing, “I want to go home” until the words sound wrong.

Reflexively detaching, thumbing through treasured memories
already worn at the edges like old photos; the pale light of
remembered sunshine doesn’t light the way in front of you
and your body coils, taut with a pain it can’t release.

Your brain can’t help staring at the slim silver disc
of a polarizer gazing up through the water.
It says, “help me” and you say, “I don’t know how.”

rêvasser iii (arrêt sur la voie)


my life feels like a
train stopped in its tracks
for “maintenance” of indeterminate time.

and when my engine
sparks again, breath stuttering,
wheels shuddering forward against inertia,

i’ve forgotten who i am,
the railways that led me here and
which turnoff to take next. i simply move

and hope the iron
in my blood will magnetize
and i will follow its pull to my source.

rêvasser iv (lundi matin)


Monday mornings are grey
clouds and a jostle of black
handbags like crows on the
too-crowded tram;
they are the heavy fumes of
secondhand smoke and
men slouched at cafes with their
cigarettes and coffees;
magpies in the trees, debris
in the cobblestone street and sweet
smell of fresh-fallen rain,
pigeons following pedestrians,
missed trams and missed texts
and most of all, the words
“Prochain arrêt.”

rêvasser v (coup de fil)


In the long yawns of
your dusk and my dawn
I curl into the crook of your ear,
embodied in an airpod,
imagining expressions
in your inflection.

In a womb of whispers and
spoken smiles, the world shrinks to
only us
and the vibrations of your
throat through the phone
feel almost like touch.

and if sometimes I want a hand to hold
instead of midnight murmurs
slurred by static —?

my lips brush the
“end call” button like a kiss
and I hope it is enough.

rêvasser vi (un homme politique)


Every other night, new posters are pasted
onto the campus’s message boards,
full faces of candidates looking
self-righteous, overlapping one another;
communists on nationalists on
environmentalists on
centrists on
and on.

All I can think is: immigration policies
look a lot different when you are the
foreigner.

I study the collection of fliers
littering my bed, my drawers,
my brain; I try to memorize
the outlines of 12 political
apostles competing for
who gets to play
God.

Slight drawback:
I cannot vote in this country.

When I close my eyes, I see
rows of ties in “presidential blue,”
but the votes are
coming in and
they’re blank
blank
blank.

rêvasser vii (le mariage d’une vieille amie)


I dreamt about your wedding the other night,
that I was dancing without worries and
that your younger sisters were all grown up
and looked just like you.

My memories tell me you are the girl
I spent summer camps with, the one I
looked up to, born just three months
before me, who told me who I could be.

I dreamed you with flowers in your
deep brown honey hair and a smile
in your eyes, a hint of something wise
that made me feel very far from you.

The girl I reconnected with through
rock climbing, who exchanged letters
during the hard part of college and
explained engineering to an English major.

I did not dream of the man you will
marry in just two weeks’ time;
I guess that means he is
your dream, and not mine.

I think to myself that I will take the train down this summer
and go rock climbing with you again one weekend.

rêvasser viii (fière de toi)


I make bootleg recordings of your performances
to watch when I’m alone and you are sleeping.

Each time I replay them, my heart surges when
you stride across the stage; I shiver as
your fingers pull notes from the piano’s keys.

You told me once you don’t believe a person
can ever be proud of someone else, but
what would you call this burning in my chest
at your every success?

For in your every movement, I see the boy
I’ve come to know as a musician, friend, and
more—
more-- but when the crowd cheers, I realize:
the world is watching you. Their applause is
thunderous.

My applause is muffled by the miles but
I am there, as I have been always, listening;
my flowers are only words but I can tell
that you’re happy, happy, happy.

How strange that the public has just been
introduced to a pianist they should have watched
from the beginning—but they’re paying attention now.

You glow with the glory of your ascent, and so do I;
I only hope, on the way, you won’t leave me

behind.

rêvasser ix (Paris)


what can I say about Paris
that hasn’t already been said?

like grit beneath your fingernails,
it works its way into your head.

from the metro’s underbelly to
the heights of Sacré-Cœur,

your appeal can’t be denied but
you aren’t the city I prefer.

rêvasser x (le métro)


metro travel is gritty and quick,
like a shot in the dark,

like moving all your stuff
to an empty apartment within
fifteen minutes.

it jerks you along but
leaves behind your stomach,
or your lungs,

and spits you out in a gust of wind,
leaving you to stumble
towards the green glow of
exit signs.

and in the strained daylight of a
different year, you’ve forgotten
something essential,

but you don’t know what.

this is a place you can lose
and be lost.

rêvasser xi (seule)


I like being alone but
solitude can wear you down
like the rug on the bare wooden
floor of my empty apartment.

I’ve been counting the days
since I left and, coincidentally,
it’s been that many days since
I’ve had a hug.

Elbows crushed into my arms
and heels pressed down on my toes
on the tram every morning
aren’t exactly what I think of
when I say, “human contact”.

I tell myself, this is the first
meal I’ve cooked for myself
that hasn’t come from a box.

I tell myself that I can indulge
in singing as loudly as I want,
and I do.

But at the end of the day,
I’d like a “bonne soirée”
instead of a tight anxiety
that won’t quite go away—

because a part of me fears that
the rest of my adult life will be
this empty.

rêvasser xii (douze)


I wonder if maybe love comes in twelves,
in a loaf of rye bread on the table and
a dozen eggs in the fridge,
in sun streaks on beige buildings and
chicken feathers on your porch step.

I doze thinking of douze,
in the sleepy shade of the afternoon
on the grass of a campus in bloom;
I left the soft syllables of French words slur
and crush gently into one another.

Or maybe love is humming and skipping
down the spiral stairs, one-two, one-two,
one-two, or knowing that there are
two times more 12s in my day when
I count your time zone
too.