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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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Cloudy sunlight absorbs me. My soul. My thoughts melt into puddles on my pillow. Clothes curl in the corners of my room. I. You carried carrots, ‘poha’ and eggs in your tiffin everyday. Sometimes cucumbers, too. Your own friends would slice you into two with a butter knife right down the centre And sprinkle ‘chaat masala’ on you, {mocking you by saying that it was bad for you} The pitch was wet, the bat was slipping from your grip and the wickets would clash against each other every time you’d cry. You’re fighting despite the shooting pain in your left ankle, Daytime, gleaming cars I wear a blouse and am afraid Of the doors. Their voices rise up To the chapel roof Colliding with the tinted glass. {TW: suicide] every s that spills from your tongue reminds me of every moment that slipped from our grasp those dwindling days under endless stars, not as bright as the void in ours Stop Stop Stop it echoes in my eyes, on trembling lips, Trigger Warning: Implications of eating disorders three thousand layers but I'm a naked body puffer coat turned gossamer thin as grimy fingers abrade baked skin It’s okay when the world crashes down and the sky wanders beneath your feet falling as it’s okay to let others help rebuild, Reset It terrifies me how little you care what I think. The things I feel make people afraid, but when I look through them with a blank stare, they say that’s scary too. You speak words that sound nice but reek of lies. If I rewind the clock, this is what I’ll see. Your truck drawing in dust as it spins away from Purcellville, Virginia. My pursed lips and your toothy smile in front of the U-Haul, leaves defying gravity. Returning the bouquet of lilies to the cashier, who doesn’t ask why I’m dressed in black. first note that your wings are too heavy to fly, birds learn this when their mother throws them by the ankles, their mother is praised for mercy their father never has to know their brother don't have time to notice a corpse whose veins runs the same blood, their wings are too light too light to carry the weight of love and loved, they shed and shed until Content Warning: Self-harm Oh little one, with skin so pure and soft Have you ever felt nails on skin? Have you ever seen crescent moons rise? No, your moons are simply in the sky. I fashion these Crescents like blades, sharpen their ivory like knives. Crevices form in my furrowed skin, pools of blood well up, leak out like sewage. A crow came to visit me the other day, his luscious and auntful feathers stuck out as he expanded his midnight wings There was a shade cast upon me, as he softly spoke about his tumultuous travels His unfaltering grief poured out of his beak as the clocks stuck to his legs ticked quietly The black tints on his feathers faded to gray with every little insignicant word he uttered your body placed into two caskets. one: spread-eagle below a rain-battered ground, navy blued in the front edge of dusk. My Nana was buried with a shovel in her casket, Because she wanted to be the first Baptist to break through the earth When the Holy Ghost called them to. I find myself coming back to the ocean As the day comes to an end I look to the sun as it prances across the sky Painting a picture full of pink and blue Before it kisses the world goodbye and sleeps for the night 10. they built a dam in the river and now when the salmon try to go home they hit a wall. 9. i was yellow-haired and yelling, like the sun. 8. look at the little ones run along, haloed, happier. 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? |
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March 2024
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