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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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 He stared at the sky,
It looked the same today, as yesterday and the day before that, But something didn't feel quite right, Maybe because he had walked more than ever in the last two days, Or maybe because he hadn't eaten much besides bread and water.  There was a time when there wasn’t war, when red meant roses, and not the wounds of a body, the tingling surge of some things missing, tides of blood out of a broken skin. It was a time when ears still knew music, singing voices and the ebullient magic of them, and not the shots made by guns.
I wasn’t born into the war; my brother was. Around the same age when I learned about the fearful avidity before stepping into a river, pants rolled up and tanned skin fondling the water, he learned about a country that was torn apart and sewn back together, stared with his newborn eyes at the seam left behind, jagged scar on the face of an entire people.  But i can make a new one. let me
Give you an example: two nights ago i sucked beauty Into my belly Then heaved it out, churned gently And sealed away wistful immortality, Hexagonal
 There is no life: here
It is darker than I would have liked I place one foot onto the darkness Breathe in wobble Breathe out  [Content warning: eating disorders, grief, and school shootings]
Being a teenager isn’t hard they say, but they haven’t considered how hard it is to be a teenage GIRL. Wake up, first thing on the to do list is to scroll through her socials and see how much she is worth based on the bikini photo she posted last night with her abusive boyfriend. While she is scrolling she sees the bleach blonde models with slim figures and perfect skin. Why don’t I look like that? She whispers to herself with a tear rolling down her cheek. Next step of her routine is to head to the bathroom. Step on the scale, look at herself in the mirror, and scrub her skin until it is as clear as the photoshopped model she saw earlier. She’s up half a pound because she couldn’t stand the thirst any longer. As she steps off the scale she sighs, picking at her skin as she observes every part of herself in the mirror.  time sinks
like everything else in the gravity well of my childhood bedroom. i’m bound to the carpet by a force stifling suffocating extinguishing.  I think they are conspicuous
When they tell me the quiet will bring calm I think they are conspicuous When they watch the rain streak down my Window panes  Knots swell around
pruned branches. Limbs died here once. If some branches live for bird nests, then perhaps these tumors also live. A nuthatch caching in a knar seems to think so.  blessed? our hands were once intertwined over valleys
as we tongued the wisps that drizzle from the moon, fingers twitching as our legs moved us across galaxies, running until our stoned calves burnt like a feather in a volcano, euphoric -drunk from the isolation we hammered into the world when the sky was eclipsed. but we learned: night turns moon into sun, and the dazed skies oxidize into poison they force us  you are something forged, something remade. your name is a moth
with eyes for wings, more limb than insect. you can try to carve the letters out of the lipstick stains on the cracked bathroom mirror, but you’ll find only yourself, dissected. eyes. lips. tongue. I’ll tell you now: you are a combination of scavenged parts, of your past selves littering  stem to kernel
kernel to husk peel dark shells to find secrets in smooth grains. parch the rice, then swaddle it  Oh, early mornings of twenty-ten, what must she
have looked like to you? Outside every day at five-thirty AM, she’d stand on the concrete slab bridging the creek that cut through their driveway and wait alone in the dark for the bus to arrive.  The 2018 World Happiness Report named Costa Rica the happiest country in Latin America - not all that surprising when Costa Rica has for years topped global happiness rankings, alongside the usual Scandinavian suspects of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The same year, though, the UN Development Program named Costa Rica one of only three Latin American countries that has seen a rise in economic inequality since 2000. In 2018, the income of the richest 20 percent of Costa Rica's population was 19 times higher than that of the poorest 20 percent. Currently, around 38 percent of Costa Rica's total income goes to the top 10 percent of the population, leaving around 20 percent of the population in utter poverty.
 My hair is pulling out of my scalp, heavy
like the cords attached to my head -- sticky, itchy, painful to take off. They are venomous snakes and I am Medusa. Memories, sucked out of me with the force of her former beauty, with the cursed ease  [Content warning: gun violence]
it's a dying texan midnight i squint & my grandmother glows asleep in the corner my mother becomes herself a little less lawyer woman man financial child bearer for seven hours.  Lee
A cemetery. There are three rows of tombstones. Bouquets of flowers are sparsely seated by a tombstone or two. At the largest tombstone, three siblings, Margot, Chase, and Addie stand in front of it; Margot places flowers on the grave while Chase is holding a picnic basket. Addie opens the lid and takes out a banana. MARGOT Let’s greet them properly, shall we? (Altogether they bow. Margot and Chase go for a second one, and Addie follows a bit slower.) MARGOT Hey Mom. Hey Dad. It’s us again. Last time we were here…was what? Must’ve been the same day last year. Time really flies, doesn't it? (Chase scoffs, swinging the picnic basket.) What Chase, did you have anything to add?  I traced my fingers
against the cheap beads of tightly bound trinkets as it scarred my skin. Mama loves jewelry
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