Young Writers Society

First Sprouts: Initial Goal
Early Bloomer: Secondary Goal
NaPo Completion: Final Goal


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Bushel of Apples: 5 Comments in One Thread


Jam Collector: Attend 5 Poetry Jams

a letter to the mother of my teenaged self


then.
i am not coming home until the red ringed demons in your mouth take root in someone else’s dna and leave me the hell alone.

growing up i didn’t know that your ghost would walk in my skin every time i felt the earthquakes come shuddering through my bones. i had to learn that not everyone keeps memories of what happened to them like tattoos on their skin the same way that i do. not everyone makes themselves into cookie cutter shapes in order to be more appetizing. some people just are themselves without anything to hide.

your ghosts warns me that nobody will love me until i am like you.

(what i really needed to learn was that no one will love me until i am not h i n g like you.)


now.
i will gentle you into submitting to who i am today, my full self not a broken daughter with as many flaws as freckles

and finally, you will tell me that the sunshine in my heart is your greatest pride and joy and that you’re sorry— sorry for all the times that i felt the soles of your feet on my spine stomp me into submission, tamp me down until i fit into something a little more appropriate, a little more lady like— a little less than i was before.

all i’ve ever wanted was to love.

i’ve never wanted the hate that grows (in) me—

poisons me from the inside and makes me rotten,
hollow,
forgotten.

all i’ve ever wanted was to love you. you, with your edges that leave paper cuts on my heart, digging deep and stinging long after they’ve been left me behind for a newer, better torment

elementary school bruises flowering across my shoulders from being bent so deeply in half by my desire to still fit into your palms. to still fit into the shape you intended me to be.

i was never a shape. i am all consuming edges that cannot be tied down. you cannot snuff me out because i am inevitably part of you— you can’t go back now. you can see me as a mistake but i will see me as i truly am— a miracle.

where does this sorrow come from?
i can’t seem to swallow it no matter how hard i try
where did i get this all consuming loneliness?

what, these old things? these words that i wear in my crown? why, they came from my mama.
she told me who i was and and then she
braided the doubt of knowing who i was supposed to be into my french braids.
making sure i’d always have to turn back north towards her to find my sense of direction.

i spent twenty years with my heart strings between my finger tips, trying to find some way to restring them so that i could finally figure out what you wanted me to be.
taking each puzzle piece of my soul out and finding where it fits into the dichotomy of you and i.

i (was) am
a carbon copy, made over to match.
exactly the same.
except in the ways i was never enough.

P.S.
as it turns out,
all the bitterness you fed me only made me more like me.

1/30

i spend what feels like years walking up and down your spine
the curves, the edges, the backbone that stands ram-rod straight
the rib caged piano flattened into infinite space between my morning and evening suns
east and west settled beneath your collarbones

your shattered stars between sips of coffee and my kisses

as if the symphony we make in bed is something that can replicated an infinte amount of times

i think you and i both know that our kisses are finite across the maps we've built to keep each other alive

the wolves i felt beneath your skin are still howling when i close and lock the doors at night.

ours is an ambiguous love. hard to explain.
you are what i always wanted out of life and yet you are so hard to reach in your most darkest places

i bring my shield and my torch— i still cannot light the way to your treacherous self

sitting there in the dark, waiting for someone to throw the windows open—
let the light in.

am i the one to save you from your burning buildings? to put the rain back in your clouds?

i like to think so.

i like to think i know the pattern of the way your neurons fuse when you're looking at my poetry and know it's about you.

...

just fuck me and get it over with. i’m tired of waiting for sands to shift beneath our feet.

continuing to write poems about cowboys

i spend what feels like years walking up and down your rocky mountain spine.
a cowboy, a lone wolf— a solitary statue against a lovelorn black night
my stars strung out between your two slivered yellow moons, sliced right down the middle

//

a mass exodus, nothing but love left in a desolate plane. you, me— a buffalo.
we can survive a face off with a dead animal, but what if it's still alive?

i don't get the wild west. give me homegrown corn, give me midwest tornadoes. your unpredictability exists in the unknowningness of where you end and where my horoscope picks up— you will meet someone who will uproot your life and leave you broken on the side of a highway before you realize the bleeding x's they have for eyes.

dead on arrival.

you, me, or the buffalo?

who's ready? who can draw their pistol the fastest? who can outrun that tumbleweed?

who can say i love you before the fire burns out? a last lone call against the black blanket of night. not you. not me. probably not the buffalo.


///


the sips i take from your moonbeam collorbones are enough, even when hanging from the oasis of your fingertips would be so much sweeter

incomplete.


i spend years walking up and down your rocky mountain spine.
so much time wasted knocking on your bones, waiting for you let me back in.

//

i write poems when you're not looking. poems about the way you feel when you're in my skin.
your name, over and over.

//

i let you haunt my dreams so i don't have to be alone anymore.
let's be honest.
self care is so mundane. everything bloody just turns out to be red.

//

i wrote pages and pages of the same name trying to find some way to elaborate on
the poetry i see strung out between your stars— strung between your eyelashes—
catching the beam of light cast out of lighthouse (searching, searching, searching).
it doesn't matter how many times i repeat your name like a prayer, how many times i feel your syllables roll off my candy coated tongue.
you always look at me like it's the first time i've ever said it.

look, i know your name is hard to pronounce, but seriously— you don't have to be that surprised i know how to say it.

darling, i would know you and your name even if my heart forgot every word it ever loved.

six years, gone

i have counted the days backwards (and then forwards and backwards again)
trying to puzzle out the dissonance of knowing you are no longer here
and the feeling like you only went into the other room
that you'll be back in a moment, just a blink of my eye
the years stretch out before me and i toe the line between reality and the truth.

the first year after you are gone, my floorboards leave splinters in the palms of my hands
from all the crawling i did to get to the light i see somewhere in this tunnel— three hundred and sixty five days of it.
done, over, dust off your hands and move on. grief won't truly last forever, no matter what it feels like right now.

the second year, i spent the whole time picking the bits of flesh from the bits of split skeleton
that shattered against the cliffs of my rocky, grieving shore.
over and over your salty boat appeared on my horizon, a sinking ship i was never able to reach
i swam trying to find my way to your softer swells and eddies. they were also like home before but now—
every oasis is just another rain cloud.
i spend twelve months soaked to the bone.

year three and four run together. my eyelashes still drawn with cobwebbed curtains. nobody makes it out alive, my spider web of a heart is determined to trap everything i've ever loved and never let go.

year five is a flurry, a snow storm, a blizzard. i get lost trying to get us more firewood.
you were always warm, always home, always cozy. i haven't held anyone so comfortable in my arms since you.
the fire winks out and all i'm left with is the cold that digs deep into the corners of my body.
sleep rings round my mind but i never find my way out of the nightmares i've trapped myself in.

letting go sounds like a blessing at this point. let go sounds like a prayer.

i want you to let me go but i can't see to release my grip on you. two fisted, fingernails digging in. wherever you're headed, i'm going there too.

in year six
i let you haunt my dreams so i don't have to be alone anymore.

musings on the love of my life

darling, i would remember your name if i forgot every other word i ever loved.
the pages of my skin rewritten to echo the look in your eyes
when i show you the first poem I write about you— my mountain faced man with a cliff for a jaw
my edges coming undone between your finger tips, heartstrings laced through bone and tied tight.

i know the way your neurons rewire themselves when i laugh at one of your jokes
and i know the way your eyes look when they're reflecting me back at me
as if all your stars are strung out between my eyelashes
twinkling constellations, secret messages written on the back of my palms—

do you love me? check yes, no, or maybe.

Wrap your arms around me and squeeze as hard as you can. remember the way i look under your sun. remember how your light looked dancing in my hair.

i know i will always wish i could have those first weeks bottled into perfume.
i know i will miss smelling your skin for the first time.

when i woke up yesterday, i climbed out of your skin and decided it was time to try and make a new life somewhere else.
act like our heartstrings aren't tethered twine around us.


////

the wolves i felt beneath your skin howled so loudly when i closed and locked the doors at night.


////


i can still taste your strawberry maragarita on my tongue years after the last time i kiss you.