Charcoal
Charcoal
Charcoal
is our preferred method
with which to sketch our days
thick, dark swaths of pigment
that smear and make their mark
unapologetically
abstract, flowing, influential
or gashes across the page
like wounds that won't close
and neither are ugly
though we can't erase them
they are the foundations of your life
but details make the picture
the careful lines and smudges
noticing a twinkling eye
or smiling with all your teeth
and everyone you meet
is drawing their own
conclusions and beginnings
unfinished works
marbled with messy, rushed greetings
and slow, agonizing goodbyes
strapped to our backs and worn on our sleeves are these masterpieces
every day being dotted
with someone else's charcoal
our sketches are never finished
but always beautiful
but we forget, somehow:
we are all art.
The Voice
December 2025
Those Who Love Life
(YWP Editor's Note: Congratulations to Csquared! This poem is the November 2025 winner of The Tomorrow Project's monthly awards! It was written in response to the challenge, Life Gifts: "Little, name...
The Table
The dining room waits in reverent silence as the afternoon light spills through the west-facing windows, illuminating dust specks that dance above the space’s centerpiece: a massive table that has ser...
Fall In
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VT
vermont is a half-finished poem with all the lines scratched out. grandfathers who’ve lived here their whole lives still talk of leaving, of turquoise florida gulfs and california summer sun. they swe...
Hope, Maybe
… What is this? Is it … No. It can’t be. But … It looks like … Good news? And a feeling, something almost forgotten. Hope? Shhhhhhh, no no no no no! We mustn’t jinx it. It’s so rare That if we lose it...
The Things We Almost Say
There is a language spoken only in half-glances, in the weight of a pause just before someone smiles. It’s in the hand that almost reaches out— then doesn’t. In footsteps that slow as they pass a fami...
River
Through the knotweed. Down the ladder made of tree roots. Up onto the big rock. By the river. I stand, mud on my ankle and cuts on my knees. The sun sits just barely above the trees as the sweat sits ...
let it happen
it was barely audible yet soft and sure in the heat of the moment. what? I ask even though I know what you said. I know the weight and the feeling behind those words. the lights illuminate your sta...
The Banana Bread Legacy
Is it okay that I wish for my grandmother to die? Weekends as an elementary school student consisted of this: going home, packing my small blue suitcase to the brim with everything unnecessary, hoppin...
You Who Gift Me a Smile
For my friend, who sent me a letter in the mail even though we see each other every day, just so she could gift me a card and a lovely little poem; For my other friend, who sang with me on the bus to...
Night and Day
Night loved Day so much, she folded back her dark, starlit cloak to make more room for Day’s light to bloom and spill gold over the World. Day’s light touched every river, every stream. It kissed the...
Addressed To: Soulmate, Out of Reach
They say that women don’t need men, and I believe that to be true. We don’t need men. But, by whatever powers may exist, does my young heart lie awake late at night and long to feel what it has never ...
Late Night Thoughts
I'm lost in little infinities, in stars that multiply the longer I look. I lose count of what's real and what's not, unsure when the endless stream of numbers concludes, because how do we even get to...
Charcoal
Charcoal is our preferred method with which to sketch our days thick, dark swaths of pigment that smear and make their mark unapologetically abstract, flowing, influential or gashes across the page li...
My Message to Humanity
If kindness requires true intelligence, and intelligence is necessary for progress, striving for kindness would make progress inevitable.