Young Writers Society

@Spearmint

@alliyah

the prodigal brother (my loss)

i was the aaron to your moses,
what is disappointing is knowing how their story ends.
we were different fates on the same
paper fortune teller, and i wish
i knew what your side said.

grief like a thick sludge pours down my neck
and clogs my airway so i cannot breathe.
every time i hear your name: pain.
what happened?

death has not pulled out its scythe,
but i have lost you to the waves of time.
we're both doing our best
to keep our heads above water.
i guess, though, time means nothing
when you have memories,
right?

i never loved you the way the story books
would twist it, but the space for you
in my heart has yet to callus over.
my baby brother, i never got the chance
to see us grow up in tandem.
as you surpassed me in height, i looked up at you
with pride, even if it made me mad.
(i'll forever be a month older.)

and that one month without you before i could
remember what it was like,
was replaced with moments together
that are blurry.
they were hand crafted like a painting,
but obscured in the varnish that was supposed to
protect it.

one month without you turned into two.
one bitter month,
two bitter months,
three agonizing years.

each time i make a new friend, i'll never forget
who it was that gave me the ability to do so
in the first place.
you were more than a best friend,
you were a built in brother.

little brother, where are you?

come back

please

doc, i think i'm in love

i might not show it (most likely
i will) but, if i were to lose you,
whether it be to blood splats
on the pavement,
ferocious feats of nature,
or the one we can't escape
called time,
a nagging sore will be left behind.

it is horrid and ugly
even thinking about it.
sometimes it's a pain in the
middle of my right palm,
the first time we shook hands.
other times it's my entire shoulder,
it is where we grazed upon each other
on accident, after all.
most times it is behind my eyes,
where you reside when we both have nothing to say.
every single time, though, the sore is in my heart
as cheap as it is to say.

once you inevitably leave me,
take aim right at the central system
to keep me alive.
don't miss.
don't you dare.

the sore will heal, but grief is forever.
you never notice the road to healing
when you're focused on the pain.
i will be distressed for all my waking moments
because wounds heal slowly, never all at once.

if we were healed in an instant,
sympathy is a long gone part of tending to people.
it would be yet another way of distancing ourselves
from the same people we are supposed to love.

5 years in the future

never am i in the dark about things such as these.
no less does it hurt when i'm told the loss within the group.
i hate you to be stripped from me,
not by death but by distance.

each year i grew to love you more and more
with no notice to how close we became.

i'll long for the lingering scent of your perfume
on my dress after a warm embrace.
each hug was filled with feeling like it would be the last one:
what was actually last was no different.
it made it unsatisfying.

the feeling of your hands, a ghost in my memory.
i can still feel every jutting bone on the tips
and the smooth tenderness like vinyl of your palms.

keep the little fragments of myself with you and
never forget the years of memories cultivated from dedication.

i am an old toy,
one that is played with while growing up and only kept
for sentimental reasons.
and when it is time to throw it out or donate,
personal betrayal.

go on, fulfill your duties without me,
i'll be waiting for the hug when you come back.
a rare commodity which only comes along when needed,
never wanted.

i guess i'll wait here in the void where the living go
when they grow distant from someone they called family.

*AN: Hey guys this one discusses family abandonment as well as some ED imagery. If that's not something for you, feel free to skip it, take care of yourselves <3

no one cares who your father was, only the father you will be

he left you, didn't he?
it's no secret, though, you've talked about it openly.
you become more like your mother every day.
the underlying pain from a connection you never got to have
is out on display.

you've had father figures for as long as
i've known you.
but that's all they were, figures;
a silhouette there for sight.
it cannot be touched and cannot hold you
when you need it most.
and it's too fuzzy to make out if too far away,
then gone entirely once the light goes out.

a ferocious grief like a
shadow fog monster envelops the core of your being.
the head is like that of a snapping turtle,
ready to bite off some part of someone
if they wrong you.
and it grips stronger and harder each time
with cruller words than what your own father
would deem acceptable.

the fog surrounding the body can be anything.
you chose for it to be so gaunt.
when you lay down (like i wish you would for me)
stomachs are concave, hip bones jut out, ribs wave at me.
you could pass for my own size if you didn't stand so tall.
size three, really because if you can't control
how your father treated the family,
you can control your clothing size.

is that what we want?
to lay on the same bed while we hear our stomachs scream
and mistake it for our child?
both irritable and sluggish because our love became anemic.
i sip my sea water tears and offer you some
because that's the only sustenance we get.
our bodies get colder and the arguments
get heated (all about who gets the last jacket)
while the spawn of both of us thinks this is the way
it should be.

history will not rewrite my actions

are you joseph?
the favorite child taken to a strange land
out of the contempt from your familial contemporaries
who was tested again and again.

i guess that makes me the wife of potiphar.

i am the most beautiful of the land.
i had to be for potiphar to chose me as a wife.
the prettiest lily of the field in my hair
and from me nothing was withheld.

except for you.

am i as tempting to you as sin itself?
because i will seek you to break you down
as you sing my praises before you're rung out.

day after day
advances are made.
how could i resist?
even the inspired word said
you grew to be well built and handsome.

no matter what you do,
you're just encouraging my bad behavior.
i know you flee to keep integrity,
but it's more like hard-to-get.
and i like a game.

i may be the wife of potiphar,
but i don't have the heart to
throw you into the prion pits below my feet.

lust and love are two different things
and if i saw your ankles in shackles
and your hands bound for a time in a room,
dark and devoid of hope,
i would rather it be me in there.
maybe i teeter on love, but i know
all you see me as is a lustful woman
with no self-control.

and your perspective is just as right as mine.

you are one out of myriads

i like to say i can't remember,
but i know exactly when i fell in love.
a thursday evening in the eleventh year.

the day you, my angel, gave me
a feather from your wing
before they morphed into scales and thorns.
they erupted from the featherless skin
like teeth from the gums.

you fell on your side as you lost the ability to fly,
like a marionette puppet having its strings cut.
an outcast from heaven you were,
because you fell in love with a mere human.

how much did it cost to give me
miniscule plumage?
you could have had privilege after next
to further his will,
but you gave it all up to kiss me on the forehead
while weightless in the air
before your mighty fall.

baptize me in a puddle of your tears
shed from your lost past,
my broken future,
and our shared present.
a dedication to not be
taken back.

how to return such a favor for what
was really a sacrifice?

with the heirloom of your previous life,
i write you sonnet after sonnet,
confession after confession,
poem after poem.

what is written in stone cannot be taken back.
from what you became,
i love you no less.

tears are just salt water

remember that day?
you know the one,
the one where i finally showed
the depths of how much
i care for you (my true unconditional, unwavering love)
because of self destructive tendencies
i noticed for months on end.

and i cried.
it wasn't one to evoke pity.
i tried my best to keep the floodgates
closed but it overflowed anyway.
i shielded myself so you wouldn't feel bad,
but my shaking told another story.

when i heard your eyes were misty
in response to my thunderstorm,
i still get choked up.
but, i would have liked to know the feeling
of you cradling my face in your soft hands
while you wipe away the ocean's kisses
that escape my eyes.

while under a blanket, concealed from your
conflicted face, i could feel
your heat, your energy, get closer.
no one had to tell me you leaned in.
and in that moment, everyone else was a background
character.
tension, longing, embarrassment.

and you never did it.

never vulnerable,
only slightly touched.
never caring,
only somewhat understanding.

i know i got to you that day,
what else could have our syncopated
beating hearts said?
a connection on a deeper level
than what we could have ever said
with words.

it was a shallow rock bottom,
and i wish you were there to keep me company
(but i really wished to be pulled out.)

an enclosed love letter to the one i hate most

there is a type of relationship you
have with someone once all confessions
from one is out and the other is
radio silence.
it is enough to make the mind work
like it has rent.

i hate a rotten liar,
but i can't help but love the way you do it.
i'm fond of the way you
hide it on your face
when she asked if you fancy me.
because at this point
we are both too scared to admit the truth.

you look at everyone is what you say,
but i think that's because you forget my name
and call me everyone
because i am your everything.

your wonderous presence,
engraved and stoned,
sits upon our shared liar's chair.
and with each passing doubt (and failed alliance),
the mystical gems fall off
like birds on the fourth of july.

how can my love for you be so
abundant when i have become so numb?
every "i love you" is devoid
of the lucrative four-letter word.

how many times will you break my heart?
as long as i love you.

ive fallen into a void (you)
and i've made it home.

i don't know if you know this, but i really love you

shooting stars- the ones that would
magically grant any wish i came up with-
were really just thrown out cigarette butts
you flicked away before god could catch you.

my pillows are your chest and i wish
i knew if they were as comfortable
as your feathers you stuffed into a case.
the beating in my ears is what's left
when i don't have your heart to listen to anymore.
always in syncopation.

i hate loud noises i cannot control.
you are most uncontrollable like a hurricane,
but my love (my life), nothing you say
can be loud enough.

if you ask me if i could teleport anywhere, where would i go,
to a "who" or a "where"?
in simplicity, to you.
you are who i want to share my personal universe with,
but you are also where i am home.

what god has yoked together, let no man put apart even if nothing is official

singleness is a gift,
but i am unfulfilled by my own company.
i want to go home when i'm in my own room.
my house isn't home,
but i know your arms are.
i've caught all the butterflies
and my heart is calm,
like the lake we could watch our reflections in.
i've gotten as comfortable as i can be
while barely speaking a word to you.

i'm taken while being single.

you are not obligated to love me if my worst is unlovable but i doubt that's the case

i won't give you love sprouted from nowhere,
that isn't love. it may have started out that way,
but what i experience for you is more
than mere attraction.
i've cultivated something i can only describe
as the same fulfillment as growing
my own plants.
it has blossomed into something beautiful,
and that beauty can only take years to become fruitful.

i will share my little pieces of myself
that bring me joy on unending nights
(the same way you do, mon chéri).
share my favorite joys in hopes
they work for you too.
after all, i am just a bird trying to say:
i love you.

i will hold you in my chest so you can hear
the unending beat of my heart (its what i mean
when i say i love you to the moon and back).
when you break down because no one has ever held
you like that, i'll lend you my shoulder
as a crutch for hours of crying catharsis
because i forget what it's like to be loved too sometimes.

AN again: This one also covers ED stuff, feel free to skip if it isn't supportive to you. Take care, <3

would you hold my hair back?

in guttural shame
i perch back over the
stained insides of contaminated water.

the mirror and water's reflection
say it all what with my
bloodshot eyes and overflowed
tears dripping out my nose.
the congealed phlegm across my chin
make a slow bungee jump
to the pool below.

i hate to see myself
with discomfort, but i still
shove my fingers down my throat
and caress the roof leading to
my esophagus.

i tell my body to let it out,
but it shuts me down with
false hope because i waited
too long.

seconds turn into minutes
and i thought i'd be done.
i keep going in like a child does
to sweets because
i am not a failure.

when i look in the mirror again,
i realize i live the statement how
women are constantly perceived, even
by themselves. so i think of you.

you likely know the experience.
if not, some sympathy points would be nice.
so would you hold my hair back, please?
then i can use my new free hand
to clutch the toilet bowl
as it all

comes

up.

did we have to fizzle out?

you give me your sweater
and before i take it, i ask for insurance.
if we are a specified loss,
can the threads that held your heat
and pheromones be compensation?
because im afraid of being abandoned.

i don't ever want to stop loving you,
and your lump of fabric is a hug with what
encased your arms.
i'll take it, even if i don't want it to be
from you anymore.
i'd rather have a hug on standby
than for it to decompose in the garbage bin.

you're a tattoo, even when we grow apart,
you are still part of me in the form of scars.
papercuts, broken bones, gunshot wounds,
they all heal eventually, right?

i have to change the filters i use
because the sepia memories
are more vibrant
than my dull present.

i want what is good for you,
but is what's good for you good for me too?
you are the problem but also the solution.
what do i focus on?