Young Writers Society

all i know is that it is cold in your basement.
i can't feel anything but the space where she used to be
and the fingernails lodged in my spine.

i remember how she pressed her palms
on the small of my back, giggling, "are my hands cold?"
sorries spilled out like insulation from my walls. "yes."
i still press on my bruises. i can never get
the hang of a temporary tattoo.

time isn't concrete like a lot of things, you know.
that’s something people tend to remember.

jade,
you are just another lighthouse.
open your eyes, open them;
it is only you for miles.

she looks at me with those big blue eyes,
so soft in the dim light of our living room that i almost
forget what she is. vile, a monster. i almost forget who i am,
caught up in nostalgia for the girl next door,
the old familiarities of an even older life.

i broke my arm the summer of my junior year;
sometimes i still feel it aching. i remember hearing
the crunch on impact, feeling the concrete warm on my skin,
the scrape and the drag. she signed my cast with
a pink sharpie and hearts all around.

i want to grow new skin. she says i ruin everything i touch.
i imagine she is already a disgusting thing.

her brow swallows weary eyes
in my direction. she beckons you in, makes a home
in your ribcage, worms her way into every crevice.

every time i shut my eyes, i see it just like the movies;
she's dead, mouth full of blood, leaking like a faucet.

i'm all teeth and lympth nodes. she knows this.
there is not as much violence between us as i would hope for.
i want to bury what i remember of her by the train tracks,
the ones near her old home. we spent a year there, unmoving.
we knew each other like no one else did;
the center of where i am, how i am, when i am.

i can taste my name on everyone's lips,
bitter, unfaltering. she beats me into singularity
and i figure i should be grateful for it.

she oozes in through
the back door like smoke, sweating and cursing.
i appear in the living room like an apparition.
the curtains are drawn again.

she tears her cuticles off
while i beg her to stay without words.

the lamp-light struggles to reach my eyes
through the darkness. she leans in my direction,
kisses me one last time; i can see the yellow of her teeth,
all in slow-motion. love is oppressive, she says.

yes, but i try not to let her see it.
i think of her in bloom.

he is vital, alive,
and she is eurydice, one foot in the void.
i want to go back, when the years have not yet
caught up with them and their hands are still supple,
uncallused.

maybe this is all we were meant to be;
a brief moment in time, a flash in the cosmos.
wrapped up in his arms,
she must feel the weight of his pain and guilt,
must want to take it with her when she goes.

you never grow out of missing
your parents.

i imagine he's here,
still dwelling on the couch like an animal.
the afternoon sun wanes. soon, he will rise,
nocturnal in all his glory, and he will reach
for a cigarette, or for her.

as fast as it started, it’s over
and quiet again.

that is the question of parenthood;
i know this rot in me will someday
spread and the earth will reclaim me.
it is the oldest story.
nothing can be salvaged.

i can never shake the feeling,
but maybe i can dislodge it. still, i sit in the sun;
to reach eternal beauty, you have to look back.

my hands still remember
the shape of everything i've ever let go of.

in her absence, i feel the walls
breathe to the rhythm of her heartbeat.
she gags, retches, fingers down her throat;
what are you looking for
that you couldn't find in me?

i am the corpse in her trunk.
she is the body in my bed, cold beside me.
death begets death, life comes to life;
it starts in the nose when you first smell
the rot, the depravity in spades.

it felt like we were mirrors of each other.
she is shaky on the details regarding
which is which and who is who.

it’s impossible to describe what
she smelled like, only that it was ruinous;
a sweet rot, an orchard in late autumn,
bruised peaches in a vise grip.

a worm finds its way into my apple.
i imagine that i am biting into her flesh;
i could never learn to hold her name
without splitting it open.