Blog Archives

Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine

a space for youth writing on mental health & identity

Making Sense by Isabelle Fisher (18, Indiana)

7/26/2023

The morning air was heavy. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, and the dust of the room was visible in the air. Kade was sprawled across the bed, staring at the popcorn ceiling, observing its intricacies. The longer he looked on, the worse he felt. The longer he pondered, the more the weight of his own situation pushed against his heart, threatening to encompass it completely.

Heavenly Arrest by Tess (17, Arizona)

7/20/2023

I walk through the halls of school, the smell of secrets hanging above our heads in a thick smog. It doesn’t bother most of us; occasionally a freshman will get stuck in a cloud for too long and choke on their own lies, but the rest of us are used to the suffocation. Whispers are the only things that echo off the concrete walls, carrying the seed of hatred to ears willing to sow and let it blossom into truth-muffling roses.

The Things We Do To Be Seen: A Dancer's Story (16, Anonymous)

7/17/2023

While the bright lights shine against your skin, painting you the gold of a goddess’s shag carpet, you are at once electrified by the pulse of the music and crippled by the eyes that haunt you from across that auditorium. Eyes are meant to be a gift, your mother told you, blessing you with the opportunity to be seen. But not these eyes. No, these eyes are cold and dark—they reach out to you tenderly, almost intimately, as if trying to brush your hair out of your face, only to yank the strings forward and whisper in your ear: you will never, ever be enough.

That Strange Feeling by Victoria Castillo (16, Mexico)

7/15/2023

Sometimes you will have these moments where you forget all the constructs we have built as humans, whether that is language, technology, or social customs, when we realize that everything we’ve invented—the lives we are living—come as a consequence of trying to distract ourselves from the fact that we are strange beings, standing on a strange sphere in the middle of the blackness. We are an enigma, a mystery, something to not be trusted.

The Lily of the Valley by Sahana Sathiyaseelan (14, Florida)

7/13/2023

Forgotten, destroyed, isolated.
Lifeless, with the ashes of burnt grass,
a valley of no importance.

upstream by Everett Lane (17, United States)

7/4/2023

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.

​Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine