Young Writers Society

i-

a beginner’s guide to autopilot//a kind of pain

i learnt to walk the same way you learnt how to love--slowly, with hesitant steps, and the constant sensation of something skating out from underneath your feet. i’m an expert on all kinds of falling, you told me.

that was before you took my spine and broke it between your teeth. i think i forgave you for that a long while back, but i can’t really remember. the memory’s stuck somewhere on that scientific sympathy for an idiom, cloud 0.0, somewhere in Atlantis, somewhere in Spain, caught somewhere between snatches of quick conversations and glazed eyes on cold September mornings.

too many--too many--too many times
to count, you taught me what it feels like for my soul to fracture. but you always tied your shadow around my back before you left, and i think--i like to think--i like to
   think--
that maybe you felt a little bit guilty sometimes. but i forgot that you were an expert on all kinds of falling, and you taught me what it feels like to crash land into an orbit that isn’t mine.

i’ll be honest: i’m grateful you reminded me to flick on the autopilot before you left--handed me a little black box that you said wasn’t yours but you’ve always been a bad liar. and i think--i think--i
 think
i’ve kind of gotten used to it.

ii-

chronologica: the best way of dealing

when i went under, i went under fast.

you’d always dealt with pain by digging with your palms into raw, uncertain skin, stitching your sides up with paper planes and stuffing origami swans into the clefts beneath your wrists. you dealt like you'd been taught, your hands busy, your movements fast and nimble even as the cards slipped out from underneath your feet and every ace struck you unmercifully in the gut.

i believe the proper phrase is broken bones never got me through drones but my own damn captivity will.

you dealt with believing you could fly, that you could burn like lighthouses in Alexandria. i dealt with burning my hands on you when you came toppling down.

but you were fire and sparks and fireandsparks and the skittering feeling of comets trailing down the inside of my skin--you taught me how to cry. you reached down into the planetary core of what was once your heart and scooped up the ache like it was so damn easy. you'd always been able to do that, and i envied you for not breaking// for not running away// for facing your grief head-on and swinging a sword at all the chunks of metal that flew your way on the highway. the highway wasn't a snake with lips of blazing coal, you told me, and you would not melt while vaulting down the tarmac. because survival meant crashing headfirst into your own self-destruction. survival meant becoming paper. [tape back--tape back the--tape back the
      pieces.]

you taught me that cutting a frame in the beast’s belly was the best way of dealing.

iii-

a detailed guide on navigating your solar system

i learnt to walk the same way you learnt how to love--slowly, up to my knees in rainwater. we were lakes, we were the muddy algorithm at the bottom of a pond in camelot, unclear, with vague plot-points and the shared feeling of somekindofdespair.

we were rock gardens in our own strides, both of us, made of reeds and fading bruises that we masked with ivory lace and manure. we opened our pores to the sun, clogged the gateways to our hearts with mould and stood by the watering shed every night just to wait for the morning dew to wash our faces free of dust. i taught you the best places to hide from the dank, taught you how to let the sunrays wrap like lianas around your waist and drag you away into the dawn.

when i went under, i went under fast.

and i guess, somewhere in the middle, you taught me that love is different from what you grow to expect. and i taught you that expectations

sometimes rival reality, and they play tug-of-war until the stars break loose and crash on our heads like shrapnel. we’re shrapnel. we’re dangerous. we’re walking on bridges made of cardboard and streets made of fire and we’re digging tunnels into ourselves but we’ve forgotten to turn on the lights. realisations. logic. a book covered in lace and stuffed into an attic that we found while cleaning ourselves out.

we were a series of ‘do-not-forget’s and ‘please-don’t-let-me-forget’s and

iv-

there are no epilogues in nonfiction

i will teach you if you will teach me.

boats only tug at the shoreline when they see a lighthouse worth swimming towards; glass bottles are carried by the current; you&me is a tightly woven knot that rests somewhere at the base of my neck. it hurts when i look up at the sky.

it hurts when i look at the ground and wonder if snipping at knots is worse than letting sweat slowly wear through them and seep into my skin. it hurts because i know that some day 
it'll hurt less, and i'll be okay,
i've heard that when knots unravel, they become anchors to your roving sunbeams, a telescope to see the stars, a black box that carries the sound of the waves, 

and sometimes, i will twist that piece of string between my fingers, 
and i will remember you.