Young Writers Society

Signed, the Sun
I try not to be bitter.
After all, it was so long ago,
that you swore to your gods
you were the center of the universe.
And I was just an accessory
to all of your mortal exploits.

How do you feel now?
Do you feel stupid? Foolish?
Full of vitriol regret?
For all of the harm you’ve caused me,
for neglecting everything,
everything I’ve ever done for you.

Tell me, Earth,
oh sacred god,
oh center of the universe,
where would you be without me?
Without my radiation?
Without my gravity?

What if I had left?
Tell me, Earth,
oh mother of the solar system,
oh center of the universe,
Copernicus saved you from me
because I couldn’t handle a century longer.

How could you forget me?
Am I so insignificant?
Are stars light years away
really brighter and prettier than me?
Would it be better if I left?
Huh, daughter of the sun?

Maybe one day I will,
I will slip away silently,
too small, too unimportant to supernova,
and you won’t notice.
Isn’t that right?
Cruel center of the universe.

Mercury, Signed
To all of the people saying I’m in retrograde,
Are you going to blame me for your issues?
Tell me I’m why conversations have gone sour,
messages lost to the sea of babble?

(And why is it me that causes rifts?
When Jupiter makes you grow,
and Saturn reaps what you sow.)

I am ninety million miles away,
retrograde is an illusion,
and I am just another planet.
How do I cause your words to crumble?

(Not that I want to know.
Just in case you’re right.
Just in case I am the problem in your skies)

Is it because I’m desolate?
Nothing but rock and craters to my name.
Is it because I’m extreme?
The biggest temperature difference in the solar system.

(Is it because I am the odd one out?
Smaller than some moons,
unimportant in every aspect?)

Your planet laps me again,
and I am in your atmosphere.
Somehow ruining your lives.
That just sounds fake to me.

(And I hold on to that hope,
pretending your “Mercury in Retrograde,”
is just a silly joke.)

Never Signed
Hello, Earth,
my sister,
my twin,
my better half,
all of the things I couldn’t be.
It’s been millennia since we’ve spoken.

Your humans sent probes,
saw the surface that disgusted you,
saw the scars hiding beneath my cloud scarf.
They promise to send more,
just like you promised we’d always be close.

How did that work out, Earth?
How many nights have we arranged the stars,
just to send messages to the other side.
How many times do you cringe
when your people call me your sister.

Am I really that terrible?
That revolting?
That disgusting?
Do you want to purge me from your memory,
ignoring all of the ways I am just like you?

Well, I’m sorry you got a terrible sister.
I’m sorry it’s my name you’re connected to.
I’m sorry the luscious Earth,
all emerald grass and sapphire oceans,
has to put up with me, Venus.

Venus, the backward wanderer
Venus, the demonic furnace
Venus, the volcanic beast
Venus, the crushing monster
Venus, the failed sister of Earth

I don’t know why I’m writing this.
You won’t read it.
You won’t even receive it.
I am wasting my time thinking of someone
who will never return the favor.

So, I’m done.
Consider this my goodbye,
my resignation.
I am tired of being your sister, Earth.
So starting today, you are just another planet.

A Love Letter
Oh Earth,
How blessed we are to be in your presence,
how amazing it is just to see your face.
How the aestorids stop,
and the comets whistle by,
and the solar system bends to your whims.

Oh Earth,
You may not be the sun,
but you are the center of the universe.
Where would this solar system be,
if you had never existed?
If it didn’t have its darling Earth?

Oh Earth,
Those who hate you are only hurting.
They’re forest green with envy,
and feeling a little ocean blue.
It’s the closest they can ever be,
to being as amazing as blessed you.

Oh Earth,
You drown out the stars and the moon,
glowing so brilliantly with earthshine.
Everything in the heavens dims in your wake,
and no one stands a chance of being your equal.
You own this entire universe.

Oh Earth,
Your humans will never find a place like you.
You are one of kind,
absolute beauty,
the best to ever be,
and no one can ever take that away.

Oh Earth,
oh glorious dirt and lucious trees,
oh wild animals and industrial man,
oh roaring oceans and thundering fires,
oh serrated mountaintops, and jagged valleys.
How is there a way you’re not perfect?

Each decade you only get better,
you only shine brighter,
you only dominate more of the galaxy,
and I’m thrilled to see what we become.
Signed, with undying love,
Your past self from a millennia ago

To Humans, with Agony
Stop rummaging through my graves,
through my photo albums,
all of my meticulous accounts
of when life was kind to me.

Stop shouting in excitement
when you find the bones of my children
when you find the ruins of their homes
when you find everything I still mourn.

I was once something magnificent.
Something worth loving.
Something beautiful.
Something someone called Mother.

Don’t use my tears for science.
I didn’t donate my grief to museums.
You stand on my aching lungs,
and harvest my heart as your own.

Stop reminding me of all I had lost,
mocking me for the corpses I cradle,
berating me for the bone-crushing fact
that “Mother Mars” will never be uttered again.

From a Homo sapien
We are caught up in the asteroid belt,
stumbling forward
rocking back
spinning like a top just about to go still
We are the asteroid belt
splintering,
watching our friends shatter,
one day, drifting out to space
to burn to a crisp in someone else’s arms
to become a dully lit moon
to cause an apocalypse
Is that all life will ever be?
Hoping that one day
someone will think you deserve to survive
And they will prevent that mortal crash,
and let you spin like a whirlwind,
traveling a road with no destination,
following a mission with no goal,
and praying that someday,
you will finally learn how to live.

A Signed Confession
I would like to start by apologizing.
My apology is but words.
I will not carve this stolen flesh from my form,
not give back the life I stole.
But they are words that you must want to hear.

I broke into Mars' home,
stole her potential to be something grand,
something more than drab rust.
She tells that it's fine
because gas giants can't be homes,
but I know her heart is fracturing.

I took everything I possible could,
left Saturn scrambling to grab what they could,
and the universe suffered for what I did.
I made everyone suffer.
And everyone tells me that no one cares,
but I know they're lying to me.
I have grinded their futures to powder.

I plead guilty for hoarding stardust,
for ballooning large enough to blot out the sun,
for some to consider me a failed star.
But I am not a failed star.
I am just a failure of a friend.
Don't try to defend me from myself.

And everyone tries to tell me its alright,
that I am being too hard on myself,
that I am demanding an execution
for something that has never been a crime.
But I can't believe them because I know what I've done.

Pleading Not Guilty

Don't ask me where I have procured my riches,
I don't think you want to know,
just ignore my missing children,
and my children's children's bones.

But, alas, riches wait for no planet,
and rings just sparkle with ancient stardust
so if a moon or two had to be pulverized,
well they died for a good cause, didn't they?

Consider them lucky to be so exalted,
to be turned from sheets of ice to bars of gold,
from hunks of rock to chunks of diamond,
from something unwanted to something unforgettable

Everyone else under a telescope is drab.
Camera images capture their imperfection perfectly.
But my blood sacrifice turned me into a deity,
made it so no camera could ever come close to grazing my beauty

Gold and silver and bronze and gasps,
who else is nearly as beautiful as I am?
And I would kill a thousand times again
if it meant I got to become even prettier.