Caroline Schwartzbeck

Caroline Schwartzbeck (she/they) is a young writer from Virginia. She often finds herself writing about family bonds, platonic love, and the feeling that her youth is slipping away from her. Their work is forthcoming or has appeared in Blue Daisies Journal, Adoxography Literary Magazine, and Analogies & Allegories.

The Nest

i hate you, but in the way that
an architect hates the building that can’t yet stand on its own;
in the way that a builder hates the bricks
that refuse to lay themselves

i want you, but in the way that
scientists want a petri dish under a microscope to grow;
in the way that viewers want
the trailers to end and the movie to start

i reject you, but in the way that
writers reject their characters for breaking with the plot;
in the way that a sprouting plant
rejects the very soil it grows from

i trust you, but in the way that
a mother bird trusts her babies to jump from the nest
not because she knows they will land safely
but because she can tell that they need the trip