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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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 The day she starts tearing roses out of the flowerbed, I take her down to the river to watch the cranes. She asks me why the sky is blue and I tell her to skip a rock across the water. The cranes scatter across the surface, dissolve like seafoam, ash-white, stark against the marshy shore.
 it felt like getting ripped apart
like every molecule in my body was tethered to you by some invisible force quantum entanglement  [Content warning: panic attacks]
One breath Then one more Each breath takes me closer to the edge Between surviving and drowning I take three more breaths and I’m there I find myself stuck for a moment  There are monuments built
In the name of our youths For the chapters that fit Neatly within a straight-edged frame  12:00 AM: When I was younger, I called myself a princess I would put on the pink dress with the frills, pink of the flamingos And father placed a paper crown on my head, stapled together with tiny pins The same ones that mark the raw skin on my thumb now I hate everyone, but I hate her the most She stares back at me, her eyes overflowing with judgement As my abused fingers skim over my arms, belly and thighs If only I could pick up a knife and carve off the flesh there, unnecessary and unattractive Maybe then she wouldn’t be so disappointed in me, maybe then I could finally look into the mirror with the lights on.
 in the cold dank space
of a rundown, long-abandoned basement room, she sat surrounded by the echoes of previous lives,  [Trigger warning: sexual harassment]
i wear the apple foam wrapper around my fleshless wrist; because my mother jumped into the village well with the family chandi bangles after she could not release herself from her benadryl addiction; or the role of a mother. she said ghosts haunted her. she slaughtered me everyday before i learnt the role of a silent daughter. i cut holes in used amul kool cans and stick the circles to my earlobes with sap of a decomposing banyan tree leaf unchosen to be devoured by an army of fire ants. i let termites scavenge my body; my body is not my body but their nutrition.  they say only the good die young
but I’m saying they’re only good because they left us too early but I’m saying that too early can’t be early enough  Strike at the dead of night
The apex of twenty-four hours This town will sink as you smile like a dimple would do Eyelids rise and fall with tears, but our chests stay put;  Joy sprouting from a needle, injected into my stomach
Joy found in going through puberty a second time  How did we get here
The creek, with its moss adorned rocks Never seemed quite that slippery until I fell headfirst Into the water deep as you, shallow as me Sugary as my hopes, lemony, caustic as the truth Dark as the future that is evitable So it now seems, at least  It’s no fun being the ugly duckling
With a face that’s sure to make Sore eyes inflamed Because once you look at me And my pitiful predicament And my syndactyly toes, My image makes an intaglio on your mind,  Don’t do it, please don’t do it
I have nothing left of my former self I was never blessed with fingers, kneecaps, or toes Just a thin, squamous flesh casing around the brain And muscles you throw back to my brethren  Trigger Warning: Depression and Anxiety
he says we all have anxiety and depression at her age–perhaps it is normal that nothing makes her happy anymore. it is a normal day as she struggles to wake, a robin chirping cheep-cheep on the telephone line  [Trigger warning: minor mentions of death, suicide, self-harm and substance abuse]
Let me tell you about the day Joan died. It was calm. Quiet. Wet. Fat droplets slid down glass. Foggy friends spun around. Little red boat.  there is a lion in my head and it is eating away at my memory
this predator prowling through the hallways of my mind  [Trigger warning: domestic abuse]
We are walking through the city tonight, just you and me watching stars unfurl under a blanket of ebony. The buildings are aglow with light: bodegas cramped with cheery customers and opera music streaming from hidden corners. At night, the city overflows with opportunity, drawing people out of their apartment buildings and into the dark.  stereotypically, time really does slip by like miniscule granules of sand through my fingers; regardless of how vigorously I clutch my hand into a fist or how firmly I press my knuckles
 the steel house hummed with sweat.
I could see my body, pink and tulle, not drunk but dizzy, hit a slate of blue air. I’m used to tall boots, so I stutter in silver. But I clung to the way you said “Woah there” like a horse's neck.  [Trigger Warning: sexual assault]
it starts with the circuits, with the matchbox, with a hiss (your mother calls you a slut, makes fun of the straps on your tank-top and) roars the gears, spurs the engine. electric crackle as dust (he whistles when you walk, the curve made from hip bone & pigtails, born from cribs crawled out of bars and) settles. bit of oil alights a wheel, wipes a windshield, scrapes  Pursing around the bite of berries.
Staining them a new bruise. The wholeness of a shower song. How it swells from my mouth like a steamed balloon. Swallowing all that hot air, hollowing me through.  When mother birthed an ocean,
It knelt at her knees like a name. Letters aching for salvation, reaching like a syllable misunderstood. Were you a hymn to be spoken for? Like how yesterday, a boy dented his identity in denial. |
