Wandering-writer-poet - Wanderer.writer.poet

She was a bright soul who

loved dark things—

Demons

Regrets

Heartbreak

and

Me

Maybe it was because she

fancied herself

enough

to redeem all of them.

— Yushan C.

this has 100% been talked about before but younger members of the lgbt community (especially on tumblr) NEED to understand that “gay panic” doesn’t mean “oh no i’m a teen panicking because i might be gay” it means “literal legal defense used in cases where a person has murdered someone upon finding out they were gay”

I think we’re all broken, 

you whisper to the dark shimmering water lapping against the hull. 

I can see our reflections—

You, halved in white and 

Me, fading to black like an old film reel. 

Broken how? 

I don’t really need you to answer, not really. We’re cursed,

I know and you know, too, so you just laugh. 

Even that sounds like shattering glass. 

What is it about stars and streetlights and silent European nights 

          that tear us open to the core?

Cursed, you whisper, 

And suddenly thousands of years worth of history and ghosts and 

          fiends are clamouring for release beneath 

The liquid obsidian rocking the boat. 

Cursed, I whisper, but remind me:

Aren’t curses simply blessings from below?

.

— Cruise on the Danube (y.c.)

I found a drawer of letters the other day.

All of them addressed to me

All of them an

apology.

They went back

three months when

we only been together for

two

Did you know,

even then,

that you loved me?

And did you know,

even then,

that we wouldn’t make it?

The letters say y e s .

I wish they’d said n o

instead.

— Yushan C.

Love and despair are drawn from the same well.

I cannot always tell which is the poison,

And which is the cure.

— y.c.

I became so much more delicate

when I was with you—

in body

in spirit

Some days,

a strong gust of wind could’ve scattered me

over the globe

like ashes in an ocean

You taped HANDLE WITH CARE on me and

ignored your own warning

And when I was shattered on the floor,

when I was left sewing together

what was left of my soul

Without you,

That’s when I woke up

and finally realized how much better I am

Without you

So t h a n k y o u

for teaching me

I don’t need anyone but

Me

— Yushan C.

Can you wait out the winter?

Hey y’all!

I’m absolutely terrible at posting things regularly, so a massive thank you to everyone who’s following me and bearing with my non-existent planning skills. I’ll try to post one a month at least from now on, but no promises cuz uni is crazy like that.

I’ve gotten published in a few places since I last posted, and I’ll link them below! It’s super exciting, and I hope you enjoy the poems.

amaranthine

Indigo

the ghosts in my home still haunt me

(there are also poems in InkMovement’s Edmonton Youth Anthology, Vol I, but they only print in paper so I can’t put the link here)

Maybe I should’ve known romantic love was a lost cause

      for me when I fell 

More in love with the moon than any person; 

When my soul ached for one more minute under the stars, 

Rather than the company of someone else. 

.

Or maybe I should’ve known when the forest beckoned 

       me home—

Craggy trails and footstep-less dirt singing a siren’s song.

When disappearing into the wild seemed more right

Than handing someone my heart; 

When emerald pines and russet ground seemed a more 

         welcome place

Than someone’s embrace. 

.

Or maybe there was no way to know. 

Maybe it always would’ve been this—

the moon and the stars and the trees and the earth—

the persistent sense of wrong—

the slow discovery, the quick recovery—

Maybe, in the end, it would always have been like this.

.

—Hindsight (y.c.)

Photography by Hilde Engerbråten