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 Jan 2016 Jellyfish
Amber
asking the universe

Why

and went back to sleep

telling myself

Why not.
 Jan 2016 Jellyfish
Adam Mott
Nothing changed
The streets were the same
People remained on their mapped paths
Perhaps people don't change
They just find the seeds within them grow
Until, eventually, their identity becomes the flavour of the root
So that the individual thinks themselves changed
When, in reality, they are just a boldened result of all that they have always been

I am this, as are you
Everyone is the rain, the grass, the sky
At different intervals
We have all been that girl, that guy
Everyone prays from time to time
Frightened by the realities, we wish not to face
We, the ever fascinating Human race
A thought without structure
I must have been at least eight years old
when I started playing doctor in my garage,
using long gardening tools as skeletons
and drawing scattered veins with colored
pencils on sketches of the human brain.
I used to set up little name tags on the floorboards.
My parents had a plastic bin full of sticks
to help the plants grow straight that I used
as pointers, attacking each ventricle
of this made up heart with detail. I'd examine
my imaginary person and tell the entire
classroom just how to fix them up right.

Now, I'm twenty one and I must have tried
to fix you up at least ten different times.
I molded you with my hands like soil,
nurturing you with soft kisses and coffee
in the mornings. I'd even try to pull your nightmares
out from the roots, tie up the frayed ends,
and throw them into the compost. I used
my own spine like those pointers to help you
grow up straight, grow up different than all
the memories you'd blurt out like bubbles
when trying to breathe underwater. Memories
like falling asleep accidentally on the bus
just to be awoken by the driver back at the station,
the way that pity candy bar must have tasted
as you waited in a nasty plastic seat
for your mom who wasn't even worrying.
I tried to dissect you from the outside in.
Read your body like it was directions, but
I'm still just a kid in a too big overalls
playing doctor out in my garage.

You are bigger than the pretend desks
with the broken pencils inside. You are more
fragile than the yarn that I would loop
around my neck like a fake teacher's badge.
You have way too many pieces for me to count
on a skeleton, but if you let me I will try
to memorize them all, label them
with sidewalk chalk, put them together
again with Elmer's glue. If you let me,
I will let you slip on my nostalgia
like a patient's gown, let you relive
a tiny moment of the childhood that was stolen
even if it's just for a little while, even
if it's just pretend.
 Dec 2015 Jellyfish
Amy Perry
I love you,
Wildly, silently,
Imitating it's idly,
Displaying my affection quietly.

Timid, I am, of course.
Enjoying our discourse.
And everything you are,
I'm so heavenly immersed -

Yes, in your quirky quarks from quasars,
Running its benevolent course.

Still, inside, I thirst.
To let you know,
I'm yours.

Lost in a loving serge. . .

With quarks from the hottest starburst.
-exhale-
I wish there was
a metaphor
for that freckle
on your face
and the scar
on your right knee

I wish
that I could capture you
in a metaphor
or three

for I'd dedicate just one
to the way
you look at me

then encapsulate
your voice
and the way it folds love meek
in the warmth
of your embrace
and the power of your grin

the third I would
set free
in the spirit
of your kiss
and the promises
it keeps, a tomorrow
in the spring

But there is no such a metaphor
I have searched
so far and wide
no verse, no word or rhyme
you are simply
the one metaphor
that is impossible to write

set so deeply
in the mind
so much deeper
in the heart
You are the pen that drives my hand as I sit down to write on a crisp December night
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