I’m an ordinary girl
Born of ordinary parents
On an extraordinary day.

They came from ordinary people
Who lived out ordinary lives.
They never really had a lot
And seemed content with lesser.

How is it then that I was born
Always wanting something more.
Seeking that beyond the screen
Not satisfied with all at hand.

Why did I not fit the mold
That formed my sis and  brother.
It seemed to work out fine for them
But was a prison cell for me.

I bashed through those restraining walls
To seek my future my own way
Finding cliffs I could not climb
And oceans I could never swim

There was a narrow path to take
But I preferred to dance the edges
Gathering the shiny baubles
That melted in the setting Sun
And left me where I am today
Living an ordinary life

And seeking to plant Hollyhocks
Where only cactus ever grows.
                   ljm

rooms are full.

There is time enough.

Time to move in.

I can see theeRo9m
other end of

tomorrow,

when the door to
you is open
and the end of time

itself.
beats


In your face. Your
blue eyes are
the
Signature
of our

Love.

We are emblazoned.

   Our existence,

in our faces reflect
on my own.

Our
blue eyes
move into

Tomorrow


Caroline Shank
February 22, 2025

In troubled times, eruptions split the sky.
When the two cosmic lines converge,
the technological order unveils itself.

The cycle repeats in another scene,
endlessly turning.
Don’t lend it your memories, Ulisses.

The door of the Panopticon is crossed.
The glass, soundless, shatters.
Tomorrow dissolves into a quantum chance,
screaming conflicting images.

Don’t be lost in lonely silence.
Let go of melancholy.
Come back home, to the real people,
where hope lingers despite the inky fog.
There, you will feel better.

Wind-carved
spine twisted—feral, gnarled.
A body bent,
splintered—never severed.

Salt licked wounds raw. Brine sutured marrow.
Bark flayed to ribbons, limbs ink-blurred—
curling, unwritten. A thing undone, a thing refusing.

Roots plunged—teeth to brittle earth,
ribs against collapse.
Cliff crumbling, gravity unspooling—
but it held.

White-knuckled in ruin.
Fingers clawing the wind.
Wreckage. Crooked. Unnatural.

An old man exhaled— Survival isn’t always beautiful.

But what is beauty, if not this—
a body unmade, carved by violence,
and still, somehow, bloom?