Young Writers Society

if i were icarus,
i would have never flown at all.

so maybe that’s why you played the part.

the door is locked and the music is loud,
ghost stories playing on the bluetooth speaker
(because 2014’s as good as it gets for us).
the phantom tells you the wind is just right.
your wings are not made of seagull feathers and wax,
but strung together by thin hopes
and patched up with black plumage.
maybe you can fly far enough to escape this endless autumn,
if the ghosts you sold yourself to ever let you.

you said you loved flying,
but i wonder if you really meant falling
with a spectral hand there to drag you down.

sometimes, you meet a ghost before you know what they are.
i know i met one before you knew it, either:
you said there was rain on your window again
and the storm was knocking on the glass.
i told you not to let it in, but i don’t think you listened.

the wind told you it was the friendly kind of ghost.
you trusted it to catch you and carry you far away,
and it did, just not in the way you expected.
i knew it wasn’t going to love you back,
no matter how much you gave to it.
the storm will lie on every promise it makes.

i warned you of it far too late
when it started to rip the leaves off the trees
and threatened to tear you away from me too.
you’ll never be as real as me again,
so how could you see right through me?

harvest moon nights on the bike lane:
we are the last hearts beating in a ghost town,
the only ones left to breathe in others’ faded dreams.
the posters by the train station tell us the end of our story.
someone else was here to warn us of it, ages ago,
but the paper was shredded from oblivion’s pull.

our childhood was 1st wave and rainy novembers
until we strayed here, became the wanderers
that you only get to see on the silver screen,
back turned, walking down alleyways in the rain.
we’d turned into the spray-painted writing
on those abandoned, cracked wall corners
that only means something to the one who made it.
until it washes away, i am a lonely graffiti heart
left behind on the streets leading to breaking.

tonight, the world has already ended.
sometimes the world means nothing to me anyway
(even if somehow you still mean the world to me,
and i don't know how to reconcile that).

These are all so well written and evocative, I really love your style as always XD

i am a lonely graffiti heart, aslkdjhas I love that image so much <333

ahhhhhhh thank you! You've been doing super amazing too <333

we have been on enough evergreen drives
to know when the forest won't let go of us.
there are no fallen leaves here, you said,
this land will outlive us and our ghosts.
and i hope it does because i don't want you to be
the lonely haunter of silent woods forevermore—
you are already a ghost story, and i am the teller.
the forest might hold on to you, but so will i
and i don't plan on letting go first.

every moment with you is a promise of impermanence.
i wouldn't believe it if the rainstorms with you lasted forever
because not even this sky of ours is eternal.
the leaves had their time, and we had ours,
spending it on a couch with our eyes on turbulent clouds.

by all means, let's feed the lies we still believe in.
let's say we have all the time in the world—
you go pull the curtains, and i'll close the doors.
when we're finally alone (we're not) we'll sit on the floor,
talking about when we'll dare to go outside next.
we'll pretend the ghost isn't a voice in the conversation.

this world is not ready for you yet,
but neither am i ready for you to be gone.
the wind isn't ready, either. please don't listen to it.

and now, the sounds of desperate cars in traffic
have brought us back to our senses.
the rain promises to turn them all to rust
and for once, i believe it will.
until then, you will be my lifeboat,
my ghost ship before the waters are still again.

the falling drops leave a message in the puddles
like rippling inkstains on pavement.
it’s for you, and it means the storm is almost over.

(today is the last time you fly.)

the rain finally stops this weekend.
the puddles have turned into lakes
and bargaining is at last acceptance.
we have to stop holding hands—
if you are to jump into the deep end,
i can't have you drag me down with you.

but i will see you in the leaves that lived
and the birds that made it back home.
i'll know where to find you in the crocus beds
and in the long sunsets up north.
and when it rains again this november,
i'll know the ghost is not gone forever:
this time, i will welcome it.

(today is not the last time i get to say hello.)