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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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oh world why won’t you wake up why are the only open eyes mine the whole world is asleep but i am awake is something wrong with the world or is something wrong with me [Trigger warning: self-harm] i like to tease blood from my skin my bone-wine, my soul-touch tenderly dotting my arms, adorning my legs. it spills out from a goblet of flesh creating pretty patterns, sunless weather Morning: waxen. This is the story of your undoing, of chants ashening your tongue-- tell me, have you ever come close to prayer? When you mourn your pulped knees he tells you how this, too, is a metaphor river as throat, throat as garden. When
your hands hit the earth you forget how it swallows you, but you remember these molten walls. This is the story of the end. That is to say, this is you, plucking rot from the back of your mouth, the horizon pregnant with a sun you don’t recognize. How sweet is the abscess that once bore sin. This is the story of the fallen fruit that never struck ground. After all, what is worship if not the chest torn open? How much blood until you shed your skin for holiness? It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That. We entered art school at fourteen, and though we were young, many of us saw the end of our lives right then and there, staring us down on the path ahead of us. The day it all started, a hiss had been heard from Pennsylvania Avenue. It seemed to linger, almost tantalizingly, as passerby turned, questioning. Suddenly, the hiss seemed to gain more air, building up in a crescendo, like a sinister piano piece that no one wanted to hear. Eyes widened in recognition. she is a vital one, a flare of summer sun fashioned of strength and sweat, with eyes like wave-washed river stones and cheeks so red i forget to be ashamed of mine. but she is a soft thing, gaze gray like dove wings, skin of sunset, budding rose of tender spring. reach across these unsung measures and and pull me to you for a grace note of a moment. tell me i will play every beat in this repertoire. tell me that my hopes will rise in sweet overtones, that my spirit will swell to sforzando, that my mind will not linger on the fermata until i lose the melody. |
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March 2024
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