Young Writers Society

on being halfbaked: i sometimes think people look at me
and see a perfect cookie sitting glossy and golden
on the tupperware lid. all the chocolate chips arranged
just so, tucked in here and there and under the oatmeal
so that it barely looks intentional but is definitely
proportionately spread out when you bite in.

i think they think i find comfort in the way i can fit
tidily back into the cutter; all my energy has gone into rising up
instead of spilling sideways. and perhaps i do, in a way,
like to nestle in the predetermined shape. but buried down
somewhere in the dough, somewhere is a little bit of residual
baking soda, that surely would be bitter on their tongues;
there's a little unbaked bit that's waiting to expand and explode
and leave their cookie cutters like pieces of meaningless shrapnel.

i am just a wheel
rolling down hill, out of control,
teetering a bit back and forth like a hurricane
that's lost its sense of direction
on the other side. i swear sometimes
i'm only a bystander. nothing to do
but stand back
and watch the dust gather momentum.

you know when you sit down at your desk, fully intending
to apply yourself to all the things that need your attention.
you can see them all, all in your peripheral vision, slanting heavily
across an age-veiny, days-old to-do list.
all those empty crooked boxes waiting for the relieving scratch
of a tick mark.

so you pull open another tab on your computer
click to youtube and load a lofi video so that you can't be tempted
to watch another not particularly funny comedian special
on netflix as well. but the anime girl, scrawling notes in her duo-tang,
aimlessly petting her cat, adjusting the lamp's light intensity
is so inspiring and mundane that you just have to
stay and watch a moment.

and somehow you end up staring at her and her seamless loop
on repeat
until you force yourself to bed.
i think i've been watching too much lofi
recently.

sunsets flower-pressed and washi taped into a photo album; kids curled up in hammocks like contrasting swirls of yin and yang; lying on the forest floor and making pine needle angels, catching moss in long hair and catching eyes on the sun speckled canopy; ricocheting wheeze-squeezed laughter that tumbles up against pillow fort walls & perhaps the thesis of my bucket list is to become a crackly VHS reel of over-exposed and over-nostalgic memories that haven't happened yet.

Sometimes when I stare at a dark, pooling teal sky,
with only the lingering white clouds to anchor me
to any sense of distance,
I think that I may be infinite.
That it would be impossible,
and is impossible, to imagine any way
that space and time could not,
will not, go on forever.
It feels as though it would be greatly selfish
to believe that the end of anyone's existence
would be the end of anything significant.
The stars will always be exploding and eloping and caterwauling across
an endless stretch of nothing
but very much something.
As though an ant falling under an
uncontrolled cleat could really ruin
the destiny of the anthill
or the lawn where the anthill crouches
or the park that the turf drapes across
like a quilt. I sometimes stare up
at a clear and thinking dusky summer sky
and find comfort in knowing that this is the quilt
I fall asleep under every night
and the one I shall die under one day.
I have never found so much comfort
at knowing the canopy of my funeral.
When I stare at the night sky, sometimes,
I remember that I am infinite
until I end
and that is how it should be.

it always amuses me, just a little, when you ask where
i'm going, as if that's something i'm presumed to know.
nevermind that i am making no attempt to hide
my cluelessness as i spin around
head tilted up at the sky
trying to find some kind of direction
in the way the clouds pull themselves
undone, like threadbare from a spool.
i promise you this is not some bizarre
choreographed dance step. this is just me
pretending someone else can tell me
where i'm going. how about we put a raincheck
on my answer, so i can stare up at the sky
a little longer and wait for more conclusive weather.