Young Writers Society

one.

i have not learned,
how many generations
it takes to wring out
grief from bones -

but i suspect
it never goes away
the unsent letter,
may drift into dust,
but it soaks into lungs -

and we breathe,
and breathe, and
grieve, and grieve -
and maybe it is
this promise to keep,

that stops us
from being
weighed down
completely.

two.

your memory is the heirloom i keep to myself
a little too fragile to let anyone hold very long,
and so i hide you away carefully,
greedy to keep what isn't mine
until time starts to have its way;
fraying edges and fading colors,
until time has made you more gentle,
until time has made me more strong,
until i can let you be
just a memory.

three.

i have been searching my whole life
for a place i can not reach by land -

and there's a certain desperation to this
mapless-journeying that keeps me awake

when i can sleep, there's a re-occurring dream i have
of becoming a bird and catching the sun -

my feathers start to burn, one by one,
and as the ash falls wordlessly into space

i realize all at once; this is not my home.

Ahhhh, alliyah! I always feel like I resonate a lot with your poetry and the sense of a continuous life journey and never quite finding that final destination (yet). I really liked in poem three when you finished it off with:

i realize all at once; this is not my home.

you have a really strong poetry voice and I love how you are able to continue this testimony throughout all of your poems. it reminded me a lot of the poem I reviewed of yours about ancestry. It's really refreshing, honestly, to read something that I feel such a connection to. Thanks for posting your poems and making YWS a better place <33