Young Writers Society

i love how 17 doesn't have any periods until the very end! it gives it a sense of rushing and panic, but also control and calm. i'm not making much sense haha but it's very good! awesome job <3

omg these are all so good! These don't feel rushed at all despite being behind. Hard to pick a favorite, but I think it's between 12 and 14 and 16. Always such a weird feeling going through your old poetry and feeling like you both are and aren't that person anymore. Rooting for you to get to 30!

TEXT:
it's not exactly how I imagined the conversation going, ending in a pause that felt turned inside out like a question-mark. but isn't that always how we've talked - in circles and unanswered absences ? what a brutal way to say goodbye in all this unspokeness

TEXT:
maybe if i crunched 
all that i am into a sea-shell, 
folded these ornery dreams
tightly together, and snipped 
those loose-ends of mis-matched
love and such, i could be 
acceptably available
for you to carry around or 
display on your dresser.
not that i really want to be,
but i am tired of letting you down, 
with all this "too much" 
bursting out of the seams. 

TEXT:

i. she is loud.
she was born to the blare of tornado-sirens;
& that was the last time anything ever dared to speak-over-her.
she was loud, & purposely so, because she liked to be heard.


ii. she is here.
this spring entered to the sound of tornado-sirens,
& telling us we had nothing to worry about.


iii. this is spring. (a haiku)
Spring entered loud, mad –
to the sound of storm-sirens
saying, “i am here.”

ALLIYAH. 16. Yes.

@Meshugenah Thanks!!

TEXT:

would you let me take a lock of your hair for safe-keeping, just to fold into these pages here - 

sometimes i imagine those ancient hair-wreaths being made from locks of hair, pulled straight from the scalp, & eagerly woven in place while the subjects patted smooth their blistering skin with a grimace - i know this is not how these things were done - but i can't stop imagining the scene of aging grandmother pinning grandchild at her knees with wrinkled hands & greedily pulling root & tangled hair desperate - to save a little piece of now. - &

maybe i know how she feels; clinging at everything not expressly tied down, & making claims to moving rivers, & rushing wind, & fleeting horizon-scapes & weaving my own hair, & veins, & roots, & spider-webs into everything i want to hold, (even though i can't, even though my fingers aren't strong-enough & my palms not wide-enough to hold everything in place) but everyone seems so quick to disperse, like a flock of birds hit by an asteroid fire-working into the sky, like dandelion leaves being blown into a tornado, like this tide-pool becoming a rainstorm stretched miles & miles across the land - & 

maybe i just want to keep us here. maybe i know i can't. but maybe i want to try. 

TEXT:
i fear i am in love with a siren-sunrise 
false & lovely; warm & deadly; 

i fear i can not look away
for i worry that her light is already
imprinted into my eye-lids & 
there's nothing left to see

i fear i am in love with a siren-sunrise
for everyday i look. & i cannot stay away.

TEXT:
there are so many people
pulling, in their grief, at stray-loose-ends,
like these unfinished edges are weeds
rather than arteries attached to hearts,
that i worry sometimes
that we are not far
from unraveling.

TEXT:
i suppose we should start at the end. / maybe you could believe that my hesitation / doesn’t have anything with how i bright i think the sun is, / or how the warm day is - / only with how the stars seem cruelly stark sometimes in contrast with the night / & i am scared, so desperately scared, that you will find all my worry over stars, to be simply too heavy to hold / i am scared, that these broken edges worn into wounds, will let the light fall out at the gaps / & i only worry about this because, i do not want this to be the end.