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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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![]() [Content warning: Body imagery] in the night you can’t tell, ‘is that noise a cat yelping or an unborn child?’ she likes to keep it hush to not wake the others. go to sleep – we’ll know in the morning – but i don’t know mornings, and i don’t until you’ve left for work or to the oncologist’s (i’d imagine this is a white place…) when the sunlight spoils your flesh there’s some red bud on your chest & i tell you, ‘when my nails grow long and strong, i’ll pinch it off for you.’ it’ll be scabbed, so let it scab, the night will kiss it and suck it raw, with the things it doesn’t say. it is good but i keep biting them, i’m 5’5” and haven’t grown an inch since 14 because i listen to the night, not talking i think you’re mad for letting your eyes shut, for listening to our walls that urge ‘sleep’ and madder still for not asking about the child and letting the bud grow bigger, and redder sometimes, when you slumber, i curl my fingers around it & i feel it it syncopate it beat it swell like a grapefruit it live its dew wet on my hand and i can taste how bitter it must make you. and sometimes i forget your age – you say ‘i want to do to you what the redbuds do, to the cicadas’ what? –and you’ve aged so much. point at the disease and declare: ‘this is where i carry my love, this is why it grows’ where? you’re back at noon and wake me up ‘i love you’ ‘how’s the cancer?’
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Unless otherwise noted, all pictures used are open-source images in the public domain. Archives
September 2023
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