They Say I’m Too Young To Be Sad

These days, beauty is packaged and sold.

That box there is this weirdly specific hair

colour whose name

sounds like a desperate student’s last ditch

efforts to meet the word count

That shampoo is a scent that sounds like an

overenthusiastic writer’s sensory description

That t-shirt is designed to make you look slim

Mirrors are our enemies

Make-up our allies

and we gobble it up,

Burying our identities in

Consumer debt and social expectations.

— y.c.

I do not know how to go on 

With you, 

And I do not know how to go on 

Without you. 

This is our liminal space, our

Handcarved pocket of eternity. 

Always here and always leaving and maybe, 

in a hundred years or a few seconds, 

we will find our way out of this trap. 

.

—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.

Chivalry isn’t just dead.

We beat it out of us with a stick

(society)

and carved it from our souls with a scalpel

(normalization)

and now

We don’t know any different.

— y.c.

When did

h o p e

stop feeling like a dream

and start feeling like a joke?

I chase

l o v e

thinking that will lead to the

h o p e

they gets me out of bed everyday

but it keeps slipping through my fingers

like water

No,

like sand

gritty and rough

It’s worn me down

This running can’t help me find

this elusive

emotional

El Dorado

that we poets pretend to know anything about

— Yushan C.

You fall asleep to the sound of your heart

Trying to break free from your chest

And wake to your thoughts trying desperately

To escape your brain.

What does it say about you when your own

organs

Want to escape your body?

— y.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”

You wanted a love story and this

isn’t 

it. 

You say you’re going through trials by fire 

but these are not the flames 

that birth phoenix

these are the flames that destroy forests so

Put it out.

He she they aren’t worth the 

Destruction 

of your soul;

Darling, 

You wanted a love story and listen to me. 

This

isn’t 

it. 

.

—Why do we mistake destruction for creation? (y.c.)

There is beauty 

in the silence, in the stillness, in the gone-ness.

In the dripping water casting ripples in puddle—

who is left to see it?

In the soundless streets—

who is left to hear it?

-

There is beauty

in the empty, in the quiet, in the ghosts.

In the burning lights, haloes silver and rose—

who is left to see?

In the winding roads, snow pristine and clear—

who is left?

-

There is beauty 

in the dark, in the soft, in the peace. 

Silence is a commodity rarely found and never sought, 

An extinct creature killed by advancing times. 

There is beauty in its return; 

There is beauty in its resurrection.

-

(who is left to hear?)

-

—beauty in a time of mourning (y.c.)