Young Writers Society

xx.

How can I tell you
how the sands carve away my
softness every night,
chiseling me down
to my core,
the me before
four years of sea salt
built up on my skin.
How can I tell you
that God’s refinement
makes me better,
happier,
when all you see are
hard edges and
lines where once were
waves?
How can I tell you
that my roots are gently being
blown away and,
tenderly,
transplanted
into waterless soil,
how I yearn for that
stability?
And how can I tell you
that I like myself better
with you chipped away?

xxi.

Three years ago,
a girl stopped writing poetry
because her feelings were too
real
for words.

She never wrote about
how the sun sparkled on the water
the day he first picked her up in his arms,
nor the sound of the birds
when they picnicked on the roof,
the softness of moss under their fingertips.
There were no poems for
that shimmering hope of
getting vaccinated, getting a job
at the same time, of planning
a trip to Seattle, just the two of them;
no poems for hands held in the dark,
for movies watched in the study room.

It was too perfect,
being kissed for the first time,
to risk misrepresentation in
retelling.

xxii.

Tonight:

Practice piano

• even though it’s right after work
  
• and it’s more my sense of
  
• duty than any love of music;
  
• at least it’s easier in the summer,
  
• when it’s sunny, when I don’t have to
  
• drive at night
  
• just to find a
  
• piano.

Go to the library

• to get the one book I’ve been thinking of
  
• nonstop since we watched that episode
  
• maybe I’m just craving the
  
• impossible,
  
• but I almost skip the rest of my
  
• to-do list
  
• to read all night.

Buy groceries

• I like how buying produce kind of
  
• signals my stability;
  
• asserting my dominance
  
• that I can eat it all
  
• before it expires,
  
• that I won’t be
  
• leaving town
  
• again.

Cook dinner

• or, read desperately
  
• while the chicken’s in the
  
• oven
  
• and refuse to do
  
• the dishes (just this once).

Buy tickets for Legally Blonde

• one of the first movies we watched
  
• so I want to see it again,
  
• in a different form,
  
• like we’re in a different form now
  
• for better or for worse;
  
• but I want to watch a show,
  
• not self-analyze.

Read scriptures

• because I have to make this a
  
• to-do list item,
  
• even though I think the essence is in
  
• NOT needing to make it an item,
  
• so that kind of messes me up
  
• from the get-go.

xxiii.

My life has turned into
creature comforts
but it’s okay, I say,
as I sit and read,
as the flowers wilt around me
and food waste
builds up in my trash.

I’ll drive for miles,
burning gas,
just for the pleasure of it;
I’ve lost the art of
walking
since I moved to this
car-town; I could make it
work, but I don’t.

Day to day
I want, and I waste.

xxiv.

Because we can’t talk these days, we watched a movie.
It was about a girl who falls in love with a poet
and in the end, she still has to go to Virginia.

The next day you said you were crying, during the movie,
and I realized that you thought I was the poet
and you’re the one university-bound to Virginia.

I was thinking that movie might be about lust, not love,
but you were thinking of me; and isn’t that just poetic
justice? You love me, you want me, but still there is
Virginia.

Or maybe our relationship is just made up of
all the movies we watch, we steal bits of our love
from each character, scraps of what a relationship
could be, or should be, but maybe that’s just a poet’s
interpretation; for you, love somehow passes the bounds
of geography, of Virginia;

for me, it’s still a film reel
and we’re actors, playing our movie roles
just the way we wrote them. Maybe I’m a poet, but
you wrote your way into Virginia, just the way
I wanted you to, but if our life was a movie
there’d be a way out of Tuesday night tears
over scenes on a screen, divided by distance;
maybe if you were a poet you could understand my feelings
and if I had a deeper commitment I’d go to Virginia with you—

but in the end, I suspect, it’ll be you watching your movies
and I’ll stay here at home, writing my poems.

and still, you are in Virginia,
still, you are leaving me for Virginia,
still, there is
Virginia.

xxv.

when, in the course of
proving yourself
have you only proved
you’re not ready yet?

and when is it time to
stop?

(can you let it go after
two stanzas, or do you
still need a third
to feel complete?)

xxvi.

sun, shine a bit stronger
bring the summer’s warmth;
leaves, burst forth.

the cold has taken root
in my mind: burn it out
let my prairie grasses
grow anew
in the ashen soil.

worms, eat me
until every particle
has been changed
and a new season
begins.

xxvii.

Déjà, tu commences à
oublier
tout que tu as appris.

It’s slow to come back,
like piano scales with numb fingers,
the dexterity, vanished,
la finesse m’échappe.

Je cherche le propre mot,
caché quelque part dans
le brouillard de ma tête.

Mon langage est
quelque chose d’utile,
un brut usage des mots
purement pour communiquer
les essentiels.

Tout que j’ai à dire
sont les américanismes,
une traduction si base que
les mots ont perdu leur sens.

Le vrai français a
une poésie naturelle,
quelque chose que je n’ai pas entendu,
que je n’ai pas parlé
depuis deux ans.

Et cela me manque.

xxviii.

the rhododendrons
watched us fall in love,
cautiously opening their buds
to the sunlight,
hoping it wouldn’t be
swept away in more rain.

that was before I was
swept out of your arms,
out of the rain, onto trains
in a country I’d always longed
to visit,
but once there,
I just wanted you.
instead, there was language and
loneliness and
railway stations,

a bus stop that brought me back,
summertime,
reading on the grass as
the shadows bent towards
evening,
wondering when you’d be home.
the books on environmentalism don’t teach me
how to live with you.

the rhododendrons have died, so
the old house’s eyes watch
our walks through the neighborhood,
our sometimes-distant,
never-quite-present, tangled
lives.

xxix.
Oh, God


They say you can’t have faith when you have fear;
Perhaps that’s why you’ve left me on my own.
I sit and wait for you to make things clear.

My lover’s comfort costs a price too dear:
You tell me I will reap the seeds I’ve sown
I try to keep my faith, but still I fear.

It’s hard to feel like you are ever near
You are the stars, you are all things unknown
How long I wait for you to make things clear.

All that I learn I unlearn every year
And now it feels as though I’ve never grown
I know there once was faith without the fear.

If I could listen better, would I hear
The words of angels’ wings, the way you’ve shown?
Or must I wait for you to make things clear?

So how long can I stay immobile here
When all around what’s real is flesh and bone?
I cannot hold the faith and loose the fear.
I cannot wait for you to make things clear.

xxx.

Sometimes, I say goodbye
because I like to say hello.

I move to one side of the state
so the other side is even more compelling
when it calls me home.

I leave because staying is long,
and forever is a terrifying kind of endless
that only changes overcome.

I let myself become a part of the stream
because I don’t know how to be
the rock in the riverbed.

I fall asleep so that I can wake up
a better person in the morning
and try again.

I stop writing poems at the end of April
so that when next April comes,
I have a reason to start.