Young Writers Society

i still know i must return. so i tie my veins again to the migrating birds and river salmon and trust they'll know the way. ~*~*~

i've always been scared of ghosts; so i become one, before they can haunt me ~*~*~

but recently i fear swimming more than drowning ~*~*~

i believe i can hear the echoes of all my ghosts like water rippling from long ago.~*~*~



{I have no idea if I'll have time for a poem every day next week; but one can hope.}

author's note - I took all the pictures that I'm using for background pics for the poems; these are from different bodies of water that I've lived by.

1. packing list for a trip i won't return from 10.23.21
2. not anymore 10.23.21
3. it's okay to breathe 10.25.21
4. i have to ask 10.29.21
5. sinking feelings 10.29.21
6. sea sick 10.31.21
7. writing together NaPo Week Collaborations

{packing list for a trip i won't return from}

1. i am reminded sometimes that we can outgrow places like hermit crab shells that have become too small, until the sand grates tough against our spines, and our ribs crack, and we find we have no more room to breathe. nor space for wings to fly and i have a habit of holding on to broken shells and folded feathers; for far too long, carrying them on my back, just in case i start to feel rootless again.

2. i once spent a year lost at sea, became a fish, and forgot everywhere i've ever been except that i was lost, and since then, i don't count days against the sun, but against how many miles i am from shore. i carry no watch, but always a compass, always looking home, always searching because i'm not sure which way to go.

3. and i keep my lungs hollowed out, in case there is water to bail.

4. i find myself talking to myself sometimes just to hear what someone from home might say back to my wandering thoughts. and i collect all these voice mail messages like stray coins that i may need to spend.

5. this last time i left home {because home is a place i'm always leaving; never returning}, i was told to take everything, so in an angry fit, i washed the furniture of my fingerprints, and scrubbed smooth the grooves in the wall that used to mark our heights, cut out the pictures we'd hung, and tried to swallow all the stray belongings that i couldn't take with me, until i was almost drowned.

but i could never quite unbind all these veins grafted to the spruce tree roots, and wrapped around ceiling beams, and buried far too deep under river tides. because leaving is never done {whole}.

content warning: slight gore

{not anymore}


text:

{not anymore}
i'm not carrying all these memories that you left me with; you know there's a way that things grow heavy after years of picking up dust and settling into bones, there's a way you either grow accustomed to their weight, or gradually hunched by their burden, and anyways your ghosts are unwelcome here. so i've cut out every piece of skin where your fingerprints won't wash out, and i'm leaving as much of me behind as it takes to forget.

Hey, this is marvelous!!!! I was also wondering what site did you use for "Not anymore"?

{i have to ask}

why
have you
let go of all these
little sayings we used to
hold in our hands like fireflies?
were you thinking i wouldn't notice
that our words grew dim, and everything faded?
did you get tired of wondering when the light would burn out?



{prompt courtesy of Liminality: " write a poem where the line length increases with each line, and see how far you can go"}

content warning: drowning, death



{sinking feelings}

it's unfortunate how risky love always is;
that you can hardly wade in,
that there's never only a warning for rain,
i find i always seem to have to jump
both feet into hurricanes
and hope i make it out alive,
with no regard for storm-clouds.
when i learned how to swim,
my mother would scold me for being afraid
of pool water or swimming, she was ashamed
i could never seem to leap, always
had to be pushed, arms flailing,
scream-crying from the edge.
i wish sometimes she would understand
that being afraid to drown is not the same
as being afraid to swim,
treading water and sinking
are not different states of being
that are up to interpretation,
and risk-taking is more a state
of heart than state of fear,
less about what you are afraid of
and more about what you're willing to lose
to gain, and you would think by now
someone would have figured out
how to more accurately record weather reports
you would think by now that i could
accurately judge my heart, and could tell
if these signs were for warning, or heartbreak,
clear-skies, or monsoons, or i-love-you,
i-love-you-not, i-love-you; but
the sky, it's always grey.
and risk, it's always relative.

and i wonder sometimes if i
had just been allowed to linger
on the edge of the pool
without being pushed, if
maybe i wouldn't be
so unafraid now to drown.

{This is a re-write of sea sick from NaPo this year, but in song version. I've been working on for a while, but it really fits the thread's theme, so I think I'll just share it to close off this NaPo Week. Could probably polish up the singing a little bit one of these days, but this is what I've got so far; featuring me playing the uke too. Thanks for reading / listening everyone!}

I love the poems that were produced from Plume's collaborative Exquisite Corpse Poetry event during NaPo Week so I'm going to add the three that I contributed to here for safe-keeping.

You can read the rest here

earth-borne dreams by Phillauthet, alliyah, and Liminality:
There once was an earthworm,
who lived in the compost heap.
And she held very firm
that she could fly and leap.

So she gathered her feathers among her dreams
and reached for the sky with a mighty spring.
It's strange what we hope for,
it's strange what we seek,
sometimes a piece of sky is all that we need.

No sense in hoarding seeds, storing greed
in a treasure chest that decomposes
when buried in the sodden earth. When
the strings in the branches are plucked by wind,
and the song of the earth belongs to the sky
and the song of the sky, to the ground below.

~~~

scents by Que, Phillauthet, and alliyah:
I fold warm clothes from the dryer, scent of
lavender laundry detergent drifting through
my sun-shaft afternoon.

Which was, to say, the best
in in a great deal of time;
Roses and jasmine bloomed,
their scent, sublime.

Sage, rosemary twigs, and a bit of thyme,
the bitter herbs let their aroma linger, haunting 'round
as the potion refines, and the medicine cooks down
It seems this autumnal soup might do the trick;
warm broth casting away ghosts and ghouls of winter-quick,
the gardens of summer becoming our comfort feast,
the air warming inside, while outside snow begins to creep.

~~~

seasonal changes by alliyah, Liminality, and tweezers:
Autumn sighs to Summer, goodbye goodbye goodbye
While the hush sweep of Northern winds creep under door seams
The crinkling of changed leaves make for an eerie epitaph

and there were no bird cries in the forest to act as counterpoint,
so the brother and sister walked trailing bread crumbs behind them,
hoping their ears had not deceived them
and their path home would still be there by evening.

let me explain this better in words you can understand:
some things exist just to exist, and maybe find themselves dying a little
towards the end of their storyline. perspectives limit us,
they'll find themselves awake at 3am in a forest with gasoline
and almost no clue why they're even there.
of course, no one thinks to turn around.

Heyo @alliyah! Just leaving some belated thoughts on your thread~

" i collect all these voice mail messages like stray coins that i may need to spend." This image in particular gives a sense of the transactional, or maybe of scarcity that the speaker is facing. It comes out of the blue in a poem with mostly nature imagery, but in a good way (and it kind of matches with the compass and later the packing/unpacking motif!)

For poem number 3, I love the central image of conversations going in circles being linked to sea-sickness. It's one of those poetic observations - certainly makes me think of the sea and communication as more associated!

Poem number 4 - I love how you used that prompt! <3 The styling of the image with the fireflies in squares to highlight the diminishing line length is also really neat. Fireflies are also a wonderful metaphor for words/ sayings. This poem makes me think of remembrance and impermanence.

"i wish sometimes she would understand
that being afraid to drown is not the same
as being afraid to swim,"
^ I think this observational line was really well placed in poem number 5! It felt like a good framing device/ set-up for the conclusion.

Ah you're really good at playing music that just - matches - the imagery! The first few notes already sounded like water to my ears. The song is sad yet soothing - melancholy is the word.

Overall, a great NaPoWeek thread! I love how consistent the motifs were and yet each poem brought a new take on them. Everything fits so nicely with each other as well, with the swimming/drowning/sea imagery being carried over throughout the poems, and even the firefly poem still feels reminiscent of water.