Young Writers Society

rewritten from death is life, is death, which can be found here.

rot is inevitable for the
dimmed oak forest, leaves
brown to black. eaten away,
slowly.

and yet in this painful, agonizing death,
the oak is never older. bark
is no longer brittle, moss now
a new shade of green. suddenly brimming
with youth.

even through the passage of its memory
there is a glimmer of hope for the
dying. memories of the shedding of pasts,
acknowledgement of bitter starts and
sweetened finishes.

the worms recall when the tree was a
sapling, they say they only knew
through tradition but also that
everything has come
full-circle.

biting away as the moment fades,
bark discolored and the moss
is finally a pale, ghastly white.

dirt patch left over only recalls the roots.

am i beautiful to you?
i know that being human
means i should //////////
be okay with //////////////
not being //////////////////
pretty but /////////////<○
it feels so ////////////////|
painful to /////////////////>
know that /////////////////
i will never be ///////////
quite enough, nor
will i be the perfect creation.
this is the law of living, i am the
dutiful citizen. i don't feel too beautiful.

have i done
all this before?

every bit of
bitter resolve
becoming
amber ash,
am i more
same than i
am different?

it is hard to
form a parity
between
sameness and
difference.

still,
i try to reverse
the solidification
of presents.

e.

fading
glory
you hav
nevr ben idolzd
bfor. it hs left
you

fr good.

yr no lnger
a sint nly a
bystndr to
yr own mstks
bckspc bckspc

try to nliv the memris

aa e i gg nn rrr

yrslf ntil yr nthng
bt a shll.

hllw wth nthng lft
nsid

f.

bitter remedy
you have bitten more
than you can chew

float the rest
of the medicine

down

throat




(choke)



gagging on the

written

prescription
words down the

esophagus and
sludging in the
epiglottis.

he tells me his name has been passed down--- his great-grandfather had it first--- and i wonder if he knows how much weight i think is in a name. to me, names are what makes a man and breaks a man. it holds the history of those who had it before until you rewrite it and become the legacy-- forever memorialized, etching your fate under a long lineage of people who bore it before you.

i say that my name means "he who shall shine as bright as the sun" and he says- "i know. that is what makes you my sunshine" and i am immediately pulled out of my mulling. it is odd to be grounded by love- normally i would say love is this abstract, non-physical concept but it is everything-- the breath in the winter, sand on the shore and sunlight blooming the flower.

it is him hugging me while i'm talking about my name.

I love the name one it's so awesomesauce