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a space for youth writing & mental health discussion
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 It began at the base of your navel,
a lonesome twinge, a subtle ache for something more. But you refused to grant it nourishment, to feed the monster you dubbed a hindrance against yourself. So call it pathetic, call it unstable, turn your back and do your best to forget.  [content warning: domestic abuse]
911 what’s your emergency? ‘he is going to kill me; he is going to kill me’ Then one-year probation, just like O.J Simpson. Daddy was my hero; I never said a word. none of the screaming and shouting I had heard, Scratches not like falling in the playground, just ones that kept her bound.  she sat at the bank of the sea, gasping like an athlete. her face, like a flour in an oven, swollen as water dripped down on her dress.
 If a portrait can sit comfy
on a pleated seat placed at the top of your heart. Drinking the pelt, by the smooching and caressing your cold lips.  I stand
in the ruck of my fault, fighting the croaks that lurks around my ears; I stand, while my shadow sits on the rustling brook by the sideways.  If your life flashed before your eyes,
What would you remember? What your first kiss felt like Sloppy and full of possibility As you stood beneath a sky of stars Open to the world You're ashamed of what you dream at night  [content warning: self harm]
Our arms bulged, grotesque muscles in just-visible chunks. Our veins danced with each push of the dumbbell, like shovelling into panting earth. We imagined snaring grey, jiggling worms in the dirt of the earth. We imagined letting them crawl up the molding handle, up our faded button ups, and down our sweat-soaked stretch marks  [content warning: eating disorders, self harm]
count your ribs, fingering the clinging meat rack by rack, selecting a prime cut for picnic lunch, still raw, bouncing with fleshy aliveness of a pig.  [content warning: eating disorder]
i’ve emerged into the town you might call death, of cold and austere aspect: the clapboard houses sewn in rows of needling teeth. there is no excess here except the acrid second scents of cookies, second cake returning from sojourn inside this animal of an overbalanced body, a worthless, grunting ballast.  you see this, how the poet abjures
his naive lark in eden: skull invaded, a lockpicked safe— voyeurs tucked in reflections to turn on me my eyes, to pin a mirror to the lid’s inside—  I rise from the kitchen stool, staring out
into the woods where leaves swirl down from the maple trees. Winter dangles from the sky, growing ice on the Hydrangea flowers I’ve watered and grown. Above me, the sun blurs between a misty cloud, casting shadows around the house. Brown boxes wrapped with duct tape crowd the floor,  My halabeoji’s urn was marbly
like a flower vase. Days before he died, when he needed to stand, umma and I helped him up, umma’s cheek against his skinny arm while Aunt Jiyoo told me to stay outside his room. She said he had lost half his body weight and he looked as light as a child, how she bathed him in warm water.  after magenta skies
there was only twilight you called out a name in the night and my sincere self answered it then came the rolling storms twilight tears of hurt pride moths burned by the flame fireflies no longer aflame  Sweat festering on my neck
The red of the track glazing into my eyes Shameful numbers on my Fitbit stopwatch God, I just want to sit on the bleachers  It was the air that blanketed over
me that reminded me of geometry, carving me into terracotta, I discovered my new talent for withstanding the clashing of dynasties, then forsaken in the tombs.  [content warning: mentions of death]
i could end the world if i had to & end the world for the people i cherish the most people that stabbed me with their broken shards almost as much as i choke them with my words  [content warning: toxic relationships, substance abuse]
in the backseat of a stranger’s honda, the cigarette stain on my wrist still shines like alabaster. i am laced into my white dress from junior prom, but i have a feeling we graduated years ago.  At dusk on Manila Bay, I watched as the Sunlight
dyed the canvas of the sky with its orange hues, just like how a bowl of spilled boiling Sotanghon Soup slowly fritters away.  So yellow, so parched, so wrinkly
The aftermath of an envelope after you’ve torn open a letter. Dry, like lips in the dead of winter, but it's July. She emerges from the plains of the Serengeti. I’ll call her Zuri.[1] This cheetah is so free in her gait and gut A freedom I thought I had.  [content warning: self-harm, suicide]
for years i felt it lurking, the constant pressure. whenever the demons came out to play, i coaxed them back, back into the abyss.  Ma, you could braid my hair in the most intricate possible ways, adorn them with lilies and rosemary,
paint my nails with the prettiest shade of pink - but I will never be beautiful. Lilies, rosemary, braids: They’re all too fancy for me. Pretty pink’s too pretty. And your stunning hazel hair has translated onto me as this pitch black, frizzy mess.  My limbs feel cold, soggy, like half-
raw oats. Grumbles should claw from my stomach, tugging at shirt and skin, but there’s only silence. Her body bled into the ground, I’m told, crumbling like run-over  my brain is a slaughterhouse, home of a monomaniac serial killer
and i am made of a destiny to sing elegies for the souls of words lost within its crevices. i tally the deceased with a weighing scale-- the days left that my name can still be tolerably defined as “human”.  I do not need a muse
To write about my dad Because hurt is enough Less is more But not with parents Distance makes the heart grow fonder But not mine (Mine grew bitter) |
