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Since childhood, I had a complex—my legs.
Even though I ran through the neighborhood,
through the techno district, the park, and Chekhov’s little house,
through the abandoned dairy factory,
climbed over the fence into the Fairy Tale Glade,
held my own in a game of tag,
I could change direction in an instant,
unexpectedly for whoever was chasing me.
Reaching out my hand, I’d glide away.

But that never stopped people from saying,
“God, you’re so skinny. Look at those legs.”
I hated summer—
not because of the heat, but because of the shorts.
Summer meant the boat beach, the green zone.
I could dive like a coffin, like a bomb,
sending up decent splashes.
The entrance near the boat station cost 3 hryvnias,
yet the local spot was free.
And there was a café nearby with music.
I remember they played The Doors.

I was 22, and I lived with those who didn’t love me.
I twisted the same ankle 4 times in 6 months.
December 21, 2012.
I tore my ligaments.
End of the world.

I had only started breakdancing a couple of months before,
had just learned the splits.
And then—on the snow, I nailed it.
The guys carried me under their arms.

I twisted my left ankle four times
because I wasn’t listening to it.
I was supposed to run—
but I turned back.

The fourth time was the scariest—
on flat ground, for no reason.
I thought I’d broken it.
The pain was endless.
Night. Emptiness.
The first trolleybus.
I barely made it,
leaning on a stick for support.

“Conductor, sorry, I have no money. Just one stop.”
“****, man.”

But everything healed.
It didn’t hurt anymore.
I never went to a doctor.

I kept twisting my ankle,
even on even ground.
I kept going.
In the end, everything hurt.
I felt broken—
then put back together.

Maybe that’s what being a b-boy means to me.

And my legs?
They only became full
once they hit the road.
Muted forever.
Links of misplaced zipper sewed together.
I am locked inside my emptiness.
Hollow do I sound.
Watching eyes all around, following you what you do.
Can’t express, feelings of suppression, weighing heavy, making me intensely broken.
Time is limited.
No change before the twelfth hour.
Without freedom time stands still forever.
Only memories,
haunting me.
I’ll be weeping forever.
Tears from deep lacerations.
Like belt stripes on my naked skin.
In my lifetime,
I couldn’t be what I was meant to be.
God have mercy on me and them.




Shell✨🐚
History.
~
The boys of summer.

Johnny once sat under the bleachers, the scar on his tongue, a reminder of the time he bit it after falling from a treehouse. A sack full of yesterday's news in a red wagon, the first and last clues.

Eugene ... the other kid who dropped out of sight on Sunday morning, now the evening edition; now a black spot on the sun.

Why the two-year gap?

Departures and landfalls. But no explanations.

Mom and Dad never comfortable peering into the camera lens. Big brother breathing out vapors until something sparks and all
the old questions came back.

A detective's paradox. No bone. No fragment. No evidence. In his home garage hangs a poster of Eugene to remind him every day.

-- for Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin
~
Maybe I’m too simple
or too shallow
but I’m not angry.
What’s wrong with me?

I was trying to think
of someone I hate,
Jews, CIS guys, republicans,
palestinians, blacks, democrats,
the left handed, authority figures,
central americans, parents, vagrants,
the usual suspects, but I’m coming up empty

Things aren’t perfect
don’t get me wrong
I’ve got a pug nose
a flat chest
a giant forehead
and too much work to do
but I’m trying my best—

Worse yet, I’ve no plummeting anxieties
no obvious neurosis
—that one could be a misdiagnosis
no painful hangnails
no sad life tales
no addictions to defend
or hated ex-boyfriends
I have no emo hooks to pin my verse.
no current melodramas to cozen and coerce
between you and me, I think I’m off the rails
It’s really no wonder my poetry pales.

Yeah, that’s what’s wrong with me.
.
.
Songs for this:
Gee, Doctor by Dimie Cat
Sweet Lovin' (feat. Anna-Luca & Iain Mackenzie) by Club des Belugas
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 01/11/25:
Cozen = to win over, or coax.
When the blue silence presses,
and absence carves its hollow,
I search for a rare diamond,
a glint of you,
of us,
among the drifting days.

You, all edges and precision,
the logic mind.
I, the artist,
unruly and alive,
painting between your lines.
Together, we unmade the fractures
and called it a whole.

A dragonfly hovered—
fragile, fleeting—
a reminder of your soul
and the weight of what you left.
The brittle smile you wore,
I held it once,
felt the shatter in my hands.

Now, I sketch the absence,
and you map its edges.
Between us,
a quiet collaboration.
No need to name the loss,
no need to claim the light—
we move as one,
carving truth from shadow.
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