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As a student I was very talkative,
Sometimes I would talk nonstop,
And disrupt the class,
Exasperated my teacher told me to write an essay,"Why I enjoyed talk8ng.
So I wrote:
When mum was pregnant with me,
She loved to nap under our mango tree with a book in the afternoon,
My grandmother would  caution her not to sit under any tree as  suspicious witches lived there,
But mum would not heed her.
Now a good talkative witch lived in that tree
And as mum napped  we would talk for hours giggling and laughing
Sometimes grandmother would call out to mum for tea,
But the witch made sure mum was in deep sleep,
The witch enjoyed my company
You see she was the only one left in the tree,
Her family had gone to live in the baobab tree,
So she felt lonely.
All those months I had become a chatterbox,
Even after birth I started to coo all the time,
Bewitched by a witch I am ma'am.
26/2/2025
i can feel you
distancing yourself from me
i can feel continental drift
i wonder, do the shoes
you wear to run from me
have holes in them?
or do you go barefoot
careful not to make a sound
in your retreat. "cover your tracks & don't look back" i imagine
your demons whisper daily
as you are growing fond of me
i wonder if your heart puts up a fight when you want to see me
or if it's a massacre
& the demons dance
on dreams you have
of us holding hands
do you wander to your car
only to find yourself back in bed?
do you put your makeup on
just to take if off again?  
is your imagination of me
a graveyard, or a pair of open arms
that are inches away
but just out of reach?
you see, what i've been so afraid
to tell you for so long,
why i feign sometimes
before speaking
careful not to tell you
all my unspoken promises,
it has to do with the night you had your head on my chest and confessed you never thought my heart
could beat like hummingbird wings:
i apologize for my silence
what i've been trying to say
is that my heart hasn't slowed down
since the day we drank coffee together
continents apart
 Feb 26 Evan Stephens
Liana
I can't do brain
I can't do thoughts
I can't do friends
And I can't do smoking in parking lots

I can't do death
But I also can't do living

I can't do anything
Except for just giving
And giving
My old, out-of-tune piano,
when I play Metamorphosis by Philip Glass
through black-and-white eyes
speaks of me more truly
than a long, dramatic script.
Metamorphosis by Philip Glass One
Anxiety before anxiety,
sorrow before sorrow,
word before word.
I think it will arrive sooner
than I expected…

Had I felt differently?
Had I known better?
That “thing” was imprinted
on the heart of each child
before it was forgotten.

The Z boson? A particle of God?
Inner awareness?
Lightness and compassion
screaming: keep going!
Forgiveness is a gift
for healing.

I prefer to withdraw.
Foreseeing the future
is too painful.

I feel safe in my inertia,
my comfort zone, not acting
but that intrusive voice
keeps shouting: don’t stop!

If it weren’t the fear of fearing,
sorrow before sorrow,
word before word…
They don’t bother me anymore.
For different circumstances,
I’m ready now.
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