2026 - Hello Poetry

The sun sets over the tiger cages of our childhood. My brother counts his teeth and talks about the girl we were both in love with. He barely remembers her, as an old scent or melody heard only once.

0

jorge-sosa

Pizza & death are always late

The sun sets over the tiger cages of our childhood. My brother counts his teeth and talks about the girl we were both in love with. He barely remembers her, as an old scent or melody heard only once.

13

Across the initialed table, thin-limbed within a pink NKOTB sweatshirt, flicking pencils at my lap, nest of blonde hair glowing under the humming ballasts of the lance-long bulbs, she still perches, smirking slyly. I can't shake her. She is installed somewhere I can't reach. I remember all my childhood crushes, but only this one is so vivid. She invited me to her birthday, at her house, knowing I liked her. She fawned over a boy from a different school. Every poem I've written about her names him: Adam. I cried in her yard, bundled inward, went quiet, waited for my mother. On the ride home I stared as the green fields striped by. She grew up, married, started a family. I kept track only through hearsay. When she died in childbirth, I surprised myself by crying.

0

EvanS

5th Grade Girl

Across the initialed table, thin-limbed within a pink NKOTB sweatshirt, flicking pencils at my lap, nest of blonde hair glowing under the humming ballasts of the lance-long bulbs, she still perches, smirking slyly. I can't shake her. She is installed somewhere I can't reach. I remember all my childhood crushes, but only this one is so vivid. She invited me to her birthday, at her house, knowing I liked her. She fawned over a boy from a different school. Every poem I've written about her names him: Adam. I cried in her yard, bundled inward, went quiet, waited for my mother. On the ride home I stared as the green fields striped by. She grew up, married, started a family. I kept track only through hearsay. When she died in childbirth, I surprised myself by crying.

28

I do not love you like a traveler loves a view I love you like a secret loves silence, like depth craves depth. You are not just water you are emotion in motion, a hymn sung by moonlight, a soul with salt and storm in your veins. I love how you breathe without needing anyone to notice. How your tides rise and fall without shame, how your waves hold both peace and power. I love that you rage when the sky grows cruel, that you speak in roars when you're no longer heard. You are not just blue you are every feeling I’ve ever buried, every tear the world never saw me cry. And I, fragile yet fierce, quiet yet alive, found in your vastness a mirror. I do not visit you. I return to you. For in your depths, I remember I am made of wild things too.

0

Asuka

Oceans

I do not love you like a traveler loves a view I love you like a secret loves silence, like depth craves depth. You are not just water you are emotion in motion, a hymn sung by moonlight, a soul with salt and storm in your veins. I love how you breathe without needing anyone to notice. How your tides rise and fall without shame, how your waves hold both peace and power. I love that you rage when the sky grows cruel, that you speak in roars when you're no longer heard. You are not just blue you are every feeling I’ve ever buried, every tear the world never saw me cry. And I, fragile yet fierce, quiet yet alive, found in your vastness a mirror. I do not visit you. I return to you. For in your depths, I remember I am made of wild things too.

35

Late afternoon, haze hung low, heat and sky holding breath. You’re it. No tag-backs. Asphalt freckles our knees. Dinner is anytime: bologna on white; Kool-Aid cut thin with tap. No hurry home unless for the news. We don’t. We want what’s coming, not what’s been. Paper fortune tellers flutter open, close. She writes the answers first, back turned. Lift one flap: your dog dies. Another: a prince charming. Another: best party in town, limousine awaits. He lifts a flap: her name. actually meant for you, her sister whispers. Then rain, the blue-lined paper sags, ink settles in cracks, bare feet scatter, futures wash mid-fold into a storm drain. At Cheshire and Green Meadows, a drunk witch swears Venus and Jupiter will make us all rich. She leaves out how long the sky makes you wait. Lunch money turns to lottery slips. Rounding the corner, moving vans idle over chalked hopscotch, our names folded under.

0

William-A-Gibson

Paper Fortunes

Late afternoon, haze hung low, heat and sky holding breath. You’re it. No tag-backs. Asphalt freckles our knees. Dinner is anytime: bologna on white; Kool-Aid cut thin with tap. No hurry home unless for the news. We don’t. We want what’s coming, not what’s been. Paper fortune tellers flutter open, close. She writes the answers first, back turned. Lift one flap: your dog dies. Another: a prince charming. Another: best party in town, limousine awaits. He lifts a flap: her name. actually meant for you, her sister whispers. Then rain, the blue-lined paper sags, ink settles in cracks, bare feet scatter, futures wash mid-fold into a storm drain. At Cheshire and Green Meadows, a drunk witch swears Venus and Jupiter will make us all rich. She leaves out how long the sky makes you wait. Lunch money turns to lottery slips. Rounding the corner, moving vans idle over chalked hopscotch, our names folded under.

20

Some poems seem to write themselves; I just move the pen. Others are like lumps of clay; they refuse to be molded; they need moisture and time. This one is like a robin that just learned to use its wings. It heads west, on a gentle breeze, into a tangerine sky.

0

thomas-w-case

The Tangerine Sky

Some poems seem to write themselves; I just move the pen. Others are like lumps of clay; they refuse to be molded; they need moisture and time. This one is like a robin that just learned to use its wings. It heads west, on a gentle breeze, into a tangerine sky.

13

She keeps asking what he does, though his answers are recycled: French bulldogs, paintball, a seventh-grade broken nose. The basket of fries between them feels like an interview. She teases about sweat-stuck bangs, neon-laced Docs, his faux leather squeaking when he moves. Her smile forgives empty stories, softens each silence. Condensation slips down her glass, her knee brushes his, a spark he does not catch, his throat working like a valve. The door opens, closes, a draft carries smoke and cedar. distant wildfires. Outside, a truck unloads shrimp. A box bursts on the pavement, pink shells and thawing ice sliding into gutter water. Curses flare into the alley. Engines idle. Hydraulics hiss. The stoplight clicks red to green, green to red, its metronome louder than either of them. Somewhere past Brockway Summit a ridgeline blooms orange.

0

William-A-Gibson

Idle Engines

She keeps asking what he does, though his answers are recycled: French bulldogs, paintball, a seventh-grade broken nose. The basket of fries between them feels like an interview. She teases about sweat-stuck bangs, neon-laced Docs, his faux leather squeaking when he moves. Her smile forgives empty stories, softens each silence. Condensation slips down her glass, her knee brushes his, a spark he does not catch, his throat working like a valve. The door opens, closes, a draft carries smoke and cedar. distant wildfires. Outside, a truck unloads shrimp. A box bursts on the pavement, pink shells and thawing ice sliding into gutter water. Curses flare into the alley. Engines idle. Hydraulics hiss. The stoplight clicks red to green, green to red, its metronome louder than either of them. Somewhere past Brockway Summit a ridgeline blooms orange.

30

I loved seeing the orange sun buttered on the bellies of the birds Sunrise poured on mountains run through with black veins Blushing and growing in a warm shade that betrays the frost A colour so delirious, the winter morning wears it like an easy romance A flood of light held in the cold breath and exhaled from the lungs of the valley

0

Angharad

Sunrise butter

I loved seeing the orange sun buttered on the bellies of the birds Sunrise poured on mountains run through with black veins Blushing and growing in a warm shade that betrays the frost A colour so delirious, the winter morning wears it like an easy romance A flood of light held in the cold breath and exhaled from the lungs of the valley

5

Make her your muse, Let her live inside your thoughts, A constant whisper You never want to silence. Let her hair be your drawing brush, Painting worlds and gliding slowly, Sketching dreams Across your skin. Let her touch be your language, Spoken without words, Felt deeper than breath. And let her kiss Be the place, Where every day Finally ends.

0

Mateja

Her

Make her your muse, Let her live inside your thoughts, A constant whisper You never want to silence. Let her hair be your drawing brush, Painting worlds and gliding slowly, Sketching dreams Across your skin. Let her touch be your language, Spoken without words, Felt deeper than breath. And let her kiss Be the place, Where every day Finally ends.

15

She learned early that silence was the safest room in the house – a place with no doors to slam, no voices rising like weather. So she built her life around disappearing. Not dramatically, not with slammed phones or final speeches, but with the soft precision of a match snuffed between fingers. People called her calm. They mistook her quiet for grace, never noticing how she watched the floor instead of their eyes, how she measured every word as if it might detonate. When someone asked, “Yuka, are you okay?” she smiled the way a curtain smiles when it hides a broken window. And when they pressed – when they reached for the truth with hands too curious, too kind — she vanished. Ghosting was not cruelty to her. It was the only language that never talked back. A clean severance. A door that closed itself. But one day someone didn’t leave. They waited in the quiet she’d made, not accusing, not demanding, just present — a steady shape in the doorway she thought she’d locked. “Yuka,” they said, not loudly, but with the kind of voice that knows what silence costs. Something in her cracked – not open, but sideways, like a fault line shifting underfoot. She felt the old instinct rise: run, vanish, become the polite nothing that keeps everyone safe. But their stillness held her. Not trapping — witnessing. And for the first time she wondered what she was protecting: the fragile peace of not being known, or the deeper fear that if she spoke, her voice would betray her by sounding real. She didn’t confess. She didn’t unravel. She only said, “I don’t know how to stay.” It was small, unfinished, barely a sentence, but it was the first thing she hadn’t had to disappear to say.

0

VerseBuster

The Quietest Exit

She learned early that silence was the safest room in the house – a place with no doors to slam, no voices rising like weather. So she built her life around disappearing. Not dramatically, not with slammed phones or final speeches, but with the soft precision of a match snuffed between fingers. People called her calm. They mistook her quiet for grace, never noticing how she watched the floor instead of their eyes, how she measured every word as if it might detonate. When someone asked, “Yuka, are you okay?” she smiled the way a curtain smiles when it hides a broken window. And when they pressed – when they reached for the truth with hands too curious, too kind — she vanished. Ghosting was not cruelty to her. It was the only language that never talked back. A clean severance. A door that closed itself. But one day someone didn’t leave. They waited in the quiet she’d made, not accusing, not demanding, just present — a steady shape in the doorway she thought she’d locked. “Yuka,” they said, not loudly, but with the kind of voice that knows what silence costs. Something in her cracked – not open, but sideways, like a fault line shifting underfoot. She felt the old instinct rise: run, vanish, become the polite nothing that keeps everyone safe. But their stillness held her. Not trapping — witnessing. And for the first time she wondered what she was protecting: the fragile peace of not being known, or the deeper fear that if she spoke, her voice would betray her by sounding real. She didn’t confess. She didn’t unravel. She only said, “I don’t know how to stay.” It was small, unfinished, barely a sentence, but it was the first thing she hadn’t had to disappear to say.

66

When they’re little, they make your arms ache, with the heft of them, the warm, wriggling certainty that you are the whole horizon they know how to trust. You learn the choreography of lifting and lowering, the sway that soothes, the half asleep hum that says stay, stay, stay. Your body becomes a harbour, a hinge, a place where small storms break and settle. You carry them through doorways, through tantrums, through the long nights when the world feels too sharp for such soft skin. And then, quietly, as if time were a tide you didn’t notice rising, they grow. When they’re big, they make your heart ache, with the distance they must travel, with the questions you can’t answer, with the choices you can’t lift out of their hands. You learn a new choreography: the stillness of watching, the discipline of stepping back, the strange ache of pride and fear woven together like threads you can’t separate. Your love becomes a lighthouse, a long-distance blessing, a steady beam they may or may not follow but always know is there. You carry them in the quiet places, in the pause before sleep, in the sudden memory of their small hand gripping yours, in the way your breath catches when they walk away toward a life you helped build but cannot inhabit. This is the secret truth no one warns you about: that love begins as something held in your arms and ends as something held in your chest, heavier, vaster, and impossible to put down. For when they’re little, you ache with the weight of carrying them. When they’re big, you ache with the weight of letting them go. And both aches, in their own way, are the shape of love doing its lifelong work.

0

Geof_Spavins

When They're Little, When They're Big

When they’re little, they make your arms ache, with the heft of them, the warm, wriggling certainty that you are the whole horizon they know how to trust. You learn the choreography of lifting and lowering, the sway that soothes, the half asleep hum that says stay, stay, stay. Your body becomes a harbour, a hinge, a place where small storms break and settle. You carry them through doorways, through tantrums, through the long nights when the world feels too sharp for such soft skin. And then, quietly, as if time were a tide you didn’t notice rising, they grow. When they’re big, they make your heart ache, with the distance they must travel, with the questions you can’t answer, with the choices you can’t lift out of their hands. You learn a new choreography: the stillness of watching, the discipline of stepping back, the strange ache of pride and fear woven together like threads you can’t separate. Your love becomes a lighthouse, a long-distance blessing, a steady beam they may or may not follow but always know is there. You carry them in the quiet places, in the pause before sleep, in the sudden memory of their small hand gripping yours, in the way your breath catches when they walk away toward a life you helped build but cannot inhabit. This is the secret truth no one warns you about: that love begins as something held in your arms and ends as something held in your chest, heavier, vaster, and impossible to put down. For when they’re little, you ache with the weight of carrying them. When they’re big, you ache with the weight of letting them go. And both aches, in their own way, are the shape of love doing its lifelong work.

73

To have an artist fall for you Is to be loved slowly, With patience and wonder. If you were a painting, I would paint you again and again, Not to change you, But to understand you deeper Each time. An artist’s love Lives in the smallest details — The way light rests on your face, The pauses between your words, The things you don’t realize Are beautiful. You’d miss it If you weren’t paying attention, But once you see it, You’re never unseen again.

0

Mateja

Artists Love

To have an artist fall for you Is to be loved slowly, With patience and wonder. If you were a painting, I would paint you again and again, Not to change you, But to understand you deeper Each time. An artist’s love Lives in the smallest details — The way light rests on your face, The pauses between your words, The things you don’t realize Are beautiful. You’d miss it If you weren’t paying attention, But once you see it, You’re never unseen again.

18

Do fish see water as they glide, the way we never see the air, the quiet cradle always there, the world that holds us from inside? Do minnows note the silver sway of currents brushing scale and fin, or is it simply where they’ve been, the backdrop of another day? Perhaps they sense the shift instead: a colder drift, a sudden pull, a pressure change, a ripple’s lull, the things that stir the living thread. And maybe we are just the same: blind to the element we breathe, to all the gifts we never leave, to miracles without a name. For every creature, great or small, is held by something vast and near; we only see it disappear, and then we notice it at all.

0

Geof_Spavins

Do Fish See Water?

Do fish see water as they glide, the way we never see the air, the quiet cradle always there, the world that holds us from inside? Do minnows note the silver sway of currents brushing scale and fin, or is it simply where they’ve been, the backdrop of another day? Perhaps they sense the shift instead: a colder drift, a sudden pull, a pressure change, a ripple’s lull, the things that stir the living thread. And maybe we are just the same: blind to the element we breathe, to all the gifts we never leave, to miracles without a name. For every creature, great or small, is held by something vast and near; we only see it disappear, and then we notice it at all.

20

perhaps I am an all or nothing poet only in the morning when silence is not irreversible I wash my face with the water of memory I wipe it with the fragile fabric of the future first thing in the morning, why not then I notice how the orchids wear their flowers, the windows are in bloom I listen to the birds, they carry the possibility of smile without warning I remember the tempo of your steps loyal to the morning tea, to the not- yet-formed thoughts, to all the poems I never wrote but felt I find solace as I watch how the silence of snow is forgetting its roots

0

irinia

solace

perhaps I am an all or nothing poet only in the morning when silence is not irreversible I wash my face with the water of memory I wipe it with the fragile fabric of the future first thing in the morning, why not then I notice how the orchids wear their flowers, the windows are in bloom I listen to the birds, they carry the possibility of smile without warning I remember the tempo of your steps loyal to the morning tea, to the not- yet-formed thoughts, to all the poems I never wrote but felt I find solace as I watch how the silence of snow is forgetting its roots

12

The astrophysicist on the radio says we’re orbiting a reject star on an impractical rock, and still I set water to boil, lay out tomorrow’s clothes, press the loose tile back into place with my thumb. I belong to the screws and washers rattling in the box after assembly is complete, to the cracked graphite too short for the clutch, sliding from the tip of the mechanical pencil, the eraser worn to the metal ferrule, to copper rivets holding while the denim gives way around them, to the spare button stitched inside the shirt hem, riding there for a decade, waiting for fabric to fail. I belong to their patience, to what waits at the back of the closet, where nothing is thrown away.

0

William-A-Gibson

After Assembly

The astrophysicist on the radio says we’re orbiting a reject star on an impractical rock, and still I set water to boil, lay out tomorrow’s clothes, press the loose tile back into place with my thumb. I belong to the screws and washers rattling in the box after assembly is complete, to the cracked graphite too short for the clutch, sliding from the tip of the mechanical pencil, the eraser worn to the metal ferrule, to copper rivets holding while the denim gives way around them, to the spare button stitched inside the shirt hem, riding there for a decade, waiting for fabric to fail. I belong to their patience, to what waits at the back of the closet, where nothing is thrown away.

18

the Carolinas sweat in the summer, swamps seep ******* humid heat and the trees bleed hot sap into air thick as tomato soup. Pickens County, 1962 - Huck Frank buys a slushy machine, makes a sign, puts it in the window of his store to bring in business, the first of its kind in their town, but not even the newfangled drinks down at Frank’s are enough to keep people cool and draw them out from their homes where they’re starting to put AC units through their windows. a pudgy boy is no more than ten, and he lies in the bathroom and presses his back to the green and yellow tiling - they could never afford the carpet craze - and tries to selfishly steal at the stone’s cold and hold it within himself. his mama finds him there and laughs and packs ice water and cheese and peaches and takes him up to Table Rock, his favorite, walks him round and round and round it and talks about buying air conditioning, putting units through their windows. and he loves his mama, loves her dearly, but he cannot wait until he’s old enough to take himself there, to stare freely at the trees as long as he likes, to melt alone in the sun as it hangs in the sky like a fat ripe orange and then he'll stop at Frank’s on the way home to get his and Mama’s favorite candy - or maybe with a girl, a boy, a body with a hand that wants to hold his like he wants to hold theirs, maybe with a pretty face like Sammy Rigby, Leslie Parker, someone to be sweaty with in summer months like how other kids will go out to the public pools, swim laps and splash, sit out on porches, in the grass, lick ice cream running down their wrists but he is soft, soft-stomached, soft-voiced, soft-handed, too soft in the eyes of other children to attract any sort of kind attention and he has never had a birthday party as an August baby. he loves his mama, loves her dearly, but wishes that the hand holding his could belong to someone else just once (he regrets this once his mama’s passed, wishes he was ten and standing at Table Rock with her forever, listening to the price of AC, but there are twenty more years to go or so before then.)

0

fishernoel

table rock, south carolina

the Carolinas sweat in the summer, swamps seep ******* humid heat and the trees bleed hot sap into air thick as tomato soup. Pickens County, 1962 - Huck Frank buys a slushy machine, makes a sign, puts it in the window of his store to bring in business, the first of its kind in their town, but not even the newfangled drinks down at Frank’s are enough to keep people cool and draw them out from their homes where they’re starting to put AC units through their windows. a pudgy boy is no more than ten, and he lies in the bathroom and presses his back to the green and yellow tiling - they could never afford the carpet craze - and tries to selfishly steal at the stone’s cold and hold it within himself. his mama finds him there and laughs and packs ice water and cheese and peaches and takes him up to Table Rock, his favorite, walks him round and round and round it and talks about buying air conditioning, putting units through their windows. and he loves his mama, loves her dearly, but he cannot wait until he’s old enough to take himself there, to stare freely at the trees as long as he likes, to melt alone in the sun as it hangs in the sky like a fat ripe orange and then he'll stop at Frank’s on the way home to get his and Mama’s favorite candy - or maybe with a girl, a boy, a body with a hand that wants to hold his like he wants to hold theirs, maybe with a pretty face like Sammy Rigby, Leslie Parker, someone to be sweaty with in summer months like how other kids will go out to the public pools, swim laps and splash, sit out on porches, in the grass, lick ice cream running down their wrists but he is soft, soft-stomached, soft-voiced, soft-handed, too soft in the eyes of other children to attract any sort of kind attention and he has never had a birthday party as an August baby. he loves his mama, loves her dearly, but wishes that the hand holding his could belong to someone else just once (he regrets this once his mama’s passed, wishes he was ten and standing at Table Rock with her forever, listening to the price of AC, but there are twenty more years to go or so before then.)

67

When I die, live. Sell the coat, the bent crown. Let crows split the coin on stone. Rake the letters, the ash of my voice. Buy cord, coarse cloth. Raise a flag, gray as bone, edged with morning, a marker for the lost, straining in the wind, a witness torn, unsparing, bright in its ruin.

0

William-A-Gibson

When I die

When I die, live. Sell the coat, the bent crown. Let crows split the coin on stone. Rake the letters, the ash of my voice. Buy cord, coarse cloth. Raise a flag, gray as bone, edged with morning, a marker for the lost, straining in the wind, a witness torn, unsparing, bright in its ruin.

17

She wonders if the world knows. She remembers she forgot to curtsey, to demurely eat darkness. Her thoughts were more inclined toward duplicity, the artifice in his eyes. She had espied two figures walking close together in the secretive moor, the absent lord in question hiding behind another's parasol. The thin smile upon his lips resembled an Icarus bird's injured wing when caught. She better understood why the angel in Lothian pretended to be dead when the love blood had drained. Her Biblically turning away from him would eventually cast pallettes of gray shadow on his summer of another lover. And if the world should know, it would not soon pass.

0

Carlo-C-Gomez

Lord & Lady Afterword

She wonders if the world knows. She remembers she forgot to curtsey, to demurely eat darkness. Her thoughts were more inclined toward duplicity, the artifice in his eyes. She had espied two figures walking close together in the secretive moor, the absent lord in question hiding behind another's parasol. The thin smile upon his lips resembled an Icarus bird's injured wing when caught. She better understood why the angel in Lothian pretended to be dead when the love blood had drained. Her Biblically turning away from him would eventually cast pallettes of gray shadow on his summer of another lover. And if the world should know, it would not soon pass.

10

It starts simple. A girl learns the alarm gates, so she lines the inside of her schoolbag with kitchen foil borrowed from the drawer at home where everything smells of coffee and dust. Textbooks stay behind in the locker. The bag is filled instead with wadded newsprint (wash your hands --> ink.) so the weight feels right when sagging under use a hard-backed Joy Harjo. Always go alone. Two girls look guilty. One girl looks like homework, and a Catholic school uniform in a small northern plains city is its own permission. Bottle-green skirt. Gabardine jacket. The hem powdered with road dust. You pull down She Had Some Horses. Nearby, Lucille Clifton waits, thin-spined and patient, like a woman who already knows how this story goes. One hand rests on the shelf. The other hand lets the book disappear. Do not rush. If a guard wanders close, look up once with wide prairie eyes. Poor girl. Good girl. Just another kid after school. Then step back into the cold air and walk toward the bus stop. Do not smile at the sound your heart, quick as a rabbit flushing from sage. The stolen books warm against your ribs like secret medicine.

0

Kiki-Dresden

Stealing

It starts simple. A girl learns the alarm gates, so she lines the inside of her schoolbag with kitchen foil borrowed from the drawer at home where everything smells of coffee and dust. Textbooks stay behind in the locker. The bag is filled instead with wadded newsprint (wash your hands --> ink.) so the weight feels right when sagging under use a hard-backed Joy Harjo. Always go alone. Two girls look guilty. One girl looks like homework, and a Catholic school uniform in a small northern plains city is its own permission. Bottle-green skirt. Gabardine jacket. The hem powdered with road dust. You pull down She Had Some Horses. Nearby, Lucille Clifton waits, thin-spined and patient, like a woman who already knows how this story goes. One hand rests on the shelf. The other hand lets the book disappear. Do not rush. If a guard wanders close, look up once with wide prairie eyes. Poor girl. Good girl. Just another kid after school. Then step back into the cold air and walk toward the bus stop. Do not smile at the sound your heart, quick as a rabbit flushing from sage. The stolen books warm against your ribs like secret medicine.

47

it feels like time cannot pass through these layers of agony it sits heavy and stagnant, a fertile soil for the bones of grief how much patience does the pain have? this question haunts me, it waits like Schrödinger’s cat in the rubble both a memory and a looming threat simultaneously in my chest and there in the mud nobody listens to our bodies' protests and pain violence is not a distant country the television screens bleed into the carpet while we are ****** in the stillnes of sofas it is as if we are in fact watching the slow erosion of souls hunger is a parasite, it eats the future before it happens in the middle of hunger, the bullet is almost redundant for any child this is catastrophy: the step between the cradle and the ruble or the ruble of childhood they are suddenly grounded by the weight of their own nothingness in the logic of bombs, they are the same thing: a target. a mistake. a silence. nobody listens to the blood of the innocent time doesn't pass through layers of concrete & bone some are turned into the smoke of the strike others into the hand reaching from the pile or into the nothingness that fills the chest of a survivor

0

irinia

violence is not a distant country

it feels like time cannot pass through these layers of agony it sits heavy and stagnant, a fertile soil for the bones of grief how much patience does the pain have? this question haunts me, it waits like Schrödinger’s cat in the rubble both a memory and a looming threat simultaneously in my chest and there in the mud nobody listens to our bodies' protests and pain violence is not a distant country the television screens bleed into the carpet while we are ****** in the stillnes of sofas it is as if we are in fact watching the slow erosion of souls hunger is a parasite, it eats the future before it happens in the middle of hunger, the bullet is almost redundant for any child this is catastrophy: the step between the cradle and the ruble or the ruble of childhood they are suddenly grounded by the weight of their own nothingness in the logic of bombs, they are the same thing: a target. a mistake. a silence. nobody listens to the blood of the innocent time doesn't pass through layers of concrete & bone some are turned into the smoke of the strike others into the hand reaching from the pile or into the nothingness that fills the chest of a survivor

29

You ask why I carry sadness inside, why I cling to the colour grey, why I worry about everything even now, when everything seems good. My eyes see colours, my ears hear warm words, but I know that behind them there is the silence they will become. When pain raises another question, when I look at the grass turning green, I ask: will you still stay when uncertainty appears? Will bound hands and tangled steps begin to open layers of tenderness, or will they become only a burden to you, an unwanted responsibility for another life? How much goodness is in us while things are still bearable, and how many will stay in a dark room to share their light and their love that cannot be returned?

0

Agnes-de-Lodz

Sadness

You ask why I carry sadness inside, why I cling to the colour grey, why I worry about everything even now, when everything seems good. My eyes see colours, my ears hear warm words, but I know that behind them there is the silence they will become. When pain raises another question, when I look at the grass turning green, I ask: will you still stay when uncertainty appears? Will bound hands and tangled steps begin to open layers of tenderness, or will they become only a burden to you, an unwanted responsibility for another life? How much goodness is in us while things are still bearable, and how many will stay in a dark room to share their light and their love that cannot be returned?

22

I did not want the kneeling in that hospital room where the blinds stayed half-drawn against a gray Vancouver morning. Breath rose slow at the sheets like tidewater. Someone had placed orchids beside the bed their purple mouths wet. Food trays rested untouched on the side table plastic wrap fogged over bowls of fruit and small sandwiches. Outside, the harbor moved under low cloud freighters drifting like dark islands while gulls positioned the wind. Here, they speak in the soft voices people use around the dying. Someone mentioned light at the end of the road. The way people mention mountains when they cannot speak of distance. I remembered another winter far back in the valley years. Grandfather had gone before dawn that morning, the kitchen still blue with coastal dark. Salmon left from the night before and toast spread with berry jam smelling faintly of cedar smoke. You ate only half before rising, coat already on your shoulders like weather coming in. After you left I moved into your chair feeling your absence. Outside, the cedars held the fog low in their branches. A ferry horn moved slowly across the water. Neighbors arrived with foil trays and paper bags roast chicken, honey ham, jars of pickled beans from gardens gone to frost. Rain moved steadily through the gutters. We bowed our heads over the plates. Steam lifted into the dim kitchen light. And we prayed you would return safely, the way children along the coast pray when the boats are late coming home.

0

doc_mabuse

I did not want the kneeling

I did not want the kneeling in that hospital room where the blinds stayed half-drawn against a gray Vancouver morning. Breath rose slow at the sheets like tidewater. Someone had placed orchids beside the bed their purple mouths wet. Food trays rested untouched on the side table plastic wrap fogged over bowls of fruit and small sandwiches. Outside, the harbor moved under low cloud freighters drifting like dark islands while gulls positioned the wind. Here, they speak in the soft voices people use around the dying. Someone mentioned light at the end of the road. The way people mention mountains when they cannot speak of distance. I remembered another winter far back in the valley years. Grandfather had gone before dawn that morning, the kitchen still blue with coastal dark. Salmon left from the night before and toast spread with berry jam smelling faintly of cedar smoke. You ate only half before rising, coat already on your shoulders like weather coming in. After you left I moved into your chair feeling your absence. Outside, the cedars held the fog low in their branches. A ferry horn moved slowly across the water. Neighbors arrived with foil trays and paper bags roast chicken, honey ham, jars of pickled beans from gardens gone to frost. Rain moved steadily through the gutters. We bowed our heads over the plates. Steam lifted into the dim kitchen light. And we prayed you would return safely, the way children along the coast pray when the boats are late coming home.

29

no one prepares you for the middle of things, the long stretch of just paying rent and the strange feeling you didn’t get all of the instructions. you’ll end up in an apartment that’s aggressively okay, where beetles crawl out of the wall like they were there first and you’re just visiting. you’ll notice that the carpet smells faintly like someone repeatedly microwaved fish and decided that’s right for the rest of history. you’ll think about that longer than necessary. mostly you’ll be checking your pockets for your wallet. left pocket. right pocket. jacket pocket. sometimes you’ll wonder if you should see a doctor. now? maybe now? eventually the feeling goes away or it kills you. hair stops growing or starts growing in places that feel like clerical errors. you think about planting a garden, but not here. down here a dog lifts its leg, and a neighbor waves like none of it is happening. even a little while turns out to be a lot compared to nothing. you get a taste of success once. after that you start wondering how to steal more of it. failure sticks around longer. failure sits beside you like a drunk friend who won’t leave after a party. one night you’ll call up success, “what are you doing tomorrow?” failure will answer the call, you’ll think it’s a conspiracy, for a while. sooner or later somebody asks something from you or you ask something from them. now you’ve got trust. which is just a slower way of making enemies. people will say, “live in the present.” good luck with that. good luck with taxes. taxes live in the past. good luck writing the heartbreaking masterpiece that proves you were here. and good luck finding that book you swear you just saw. if the universe is working right- it will fall off the shelf in about fifteen seconds. or not. i’m sure there’s some way to correct the universe. i can’t help you with that. but i can tell you which place in the city has the best Thai food.

0

William-A-Gibson

Missing Instructions

no one prepares you for the middle of things, the long stretch of just paying rent and the strange feeling you didn’t get all of the instructions. you’ll end up in an apartment that’s aggressively okay, where beetles crawl out of the wall like they were there first and you’re just visiting. you’ll notice that the carpet smells faintly like someone repeatedly microwaved fish and decided that’s right for the rest of history. you’ll think about that longer than necessary. mostly you’ll be checking your pockets for your wallet. left pocket. right pocket. jacket pocket. sometimes you’ll wonder if you should see a doctor. now? maybe now? eventually the feeling goes away or it kills you. hair stops growing or starts growing in places that feel like clerical errors. you think about planting a garden, but not here. down here a dog lifts its leg, and a neighbor waves like none of it is happening. even a little while turns out to be a lot compared to nothing. you get a taste of success once. after that you start wondering how to steal more of it. failure sticks around longer. failure sits beside you like a drunk friend who won’t leave after a party. one night you’ll call up success, “what are you doing tomorrow?” failure will answer the call, you’ll think it’s a conspiracy, for a while. sooner or later somebody asks something from you or you ask something from them. now you’ve got trust. which is just a slower way of making enemies. people will say, “live in the present.” good luck with that. good luck with taxes. taxes live in the past. good luck writing the heartbreaking masterpiece that proves you were here. and good luck finding that book you swear you just saw. if the universe is working right- it will fall off the shelf in about fifteen seconds. or not. i’m sure there’s some way to correct the universe. i can’t help you with that. but i can tell you which place in the city has the best Thai food.

37

i could have gone a thousand times the door was open the road was there the light outside kept beckoning i didn’t not brave not faithful not believing anything would change leaving required a different strength one i did not have so i sat and let the world decide around me the seasons passed the window the roof learned to leak in new places the floorboards kept my shape as if my waiting was something given still the light beckons and with each full breath my hand moves closer to the door one day someone may find this room and wonder who lived there no one i was only present and that is not the same thing

0

RastislavKnezi

The Easier Thing

i could have gone a thousand times the door was open the road was there the light outside kept beckoning i didn’t not brave not faithful not believing anything would change leaving required a different strength one i did not have so i sat and let the world decide around me the seasons passed the window the roof learned to leak in new places the floorboards kept my shape as if my waiting was something given still the light beckons and with each full breath my hand moves closer to the door one day someone may find this room and wonder who lived there no one i was only present and that is not the same thing

38

Supermarket, fluorescent hum overhead, softening everything that should feel sharper. I take a basket before I need one, something to hold so I don’t look lost. At home everything repeats. Nan in the kitchen, something always baking. Pop at the nook with tea, steam at the same hour. Dad behind a closed door or not there at all. Nothing loud. Nothing wrong. Just set. Here, people move like they belong to where they are going. An old woman slow through the aisle, coat brushing her legs, bread tucked under her arm. No pause. No search. Just forward. I watch her until she disappears. Something in me doesn’t follow. I’m still here. Holding nothing. Further down a young man studies his receipt like it might say more. Milk. Frozen meals. Something sweet. He folds it carefully. Pockets it. I look away before he looks back. I drift. Pick things up. Put them back. My basket stays light. Not empty unfinished. The aisles stretch on full of people who already decided. At checkout, I place something down. A chicken caesar wrap in a plastic box. Already made. Already chosen. Beep. The receipt prints thin proof I was here at all. Outside, I stand still watching the automatic doors open and close like nothing is waiting for me. The world keeps moving anyway cars, footsteps, voices as if I never stood there at all. Then I leave and it doesn’t notice.

0

WiltedEverly

Receipts I Wasnt Meant to Read

Supermarket, fluorescent hum overhead, softening everything that should feel sharper. I take a basket before I need one, something to hold so I don’t look lost. At home everything repeats. Nan in the kitchen, something always baking. Pop at the nook with tea, steam at the same hour. Dad behind a closed door or not there at all. Nothing loud. Nothing wrong. Just set. Here, people move like they belong to where they are going. An old woman slow through the aisle, coat brushing her legs, bread tucked under her arm. No pause. No search. Just forward. I watch her until she disappears. Something in me doesn’t follow. I’m still here. Holding nothing. Further down a young man studies his receipt like it might say more. Milk. Frozen meals. Something sweet. He folds it carefully. Pockets it. I look away before he looks back. I drift. Pick things up. Put them back. My basket stays light. Not empty unfinished. The aisles stretch on full of people who already decided. At checkout, I place something down. A chicken caesar wrap in a plastic box. Already made. Already chosen. Beep. The receipt prints thin proof I was here at all. Outside, I stand still watching the automatic doors open and close like nothing is waiting for me. The world keeps moving anyway cars, footsteps, voices as if I never stood there at all. Then I leave and it doesn’t notice.

75

He asked to brush my hair, I said yes. It made me feel weird - nice. He put down the brush. I didn’t say yes to anything else. The room was too warm and smelt of lemon-y steam when the dishwasher opened. Threads were coming away from the carpet in patches. Crimped, like they’d been wet-plaited and unwound the next morning.

0

ju

Untitled

He asked to brush my hair, I said yes. It made me feel weird - nice. He put down the brush. I didn’t say yes to anything else. The room was too warm and smelt of lemon-y steam when the dishwasher opened. Threads were coming away from the carpet in patches. Crimped, like they’d been wet-plaited and unwound the next morning.

1

In a field They set her down and named her, softly: Flower. They wanted Form to gather there, and Time to lock her hour. They said: Remain. Be visible. Be Something We can keep. For what is held belongs to Time, and what is Named, stays deep. and yet water knew no single clock no edge of then or more she did not measure what passed through her nor weighed upon a shore she warmed before the hand arrived moved on without a claim and touched the earth altered it beyond the mark of name beyond the reach of shame They called her selfish in her flow, They named her greedy, too, for keeping all her ways within, with naught for Them to view. They raised Their ledgers up to her, demanded she be still: “Take shape. Be held. Become complete. Submit yourself to will.” and yet water does not choose a form that time can close around it does not break the living stream by fixing what is found what passes through is not undone nor kept as something owned it lingers only as a warmth a memory untoned it was not flight nor turning back nor failure to remain a tenderness so absolute it couldn’t close to name For what is held becomes a Thing that Time will wear away. and what refuses being kept does not begin to stay

0

RastislavKnezi

The Water That Refused the Flower

In a field They set her down and named her, softly: Flower. They wanted Form to gather there, and Time to lock her hour. They said: Remain. Be visible. Be Something We can keep. For what is held belongs to Time, and what is Named, stays deep. and yet water knew no single clock no edge of then or more she did not measure what passed through her nor weighed upon a shore she warmed before the hand arrived moved on without a claim and touched the earth altered it beyond the mark of name beyond the reach of shame They called her selfish in her flow, They named her greedy, too, for keeping all her ways within, with naught for Them to view. They raised Their ledgers up to her, demanded she be still: “Take shape. Be held. Become complete. Submit yourself to will.” and yet water does not choose a form that time can close around it does not break the living stream by fixing what is found what passes through is not undone nor kept as something owned it lingers only as a warmth a memory untoned it was not flight nor turning back nor failure to remain a tenderness so absolute it couldn’t close to name For what is held becomes a Thing that Time will wear away. and what refuses being kept does not begin to stay

64

At the self-checkout the machine asks twice if I have stolen anything which feels personal The woman beside me keeps rescanning lemons like she is trying to reverse a decision made years ago Outside January hangs over the parking lot large administrative slightly fluorescent A teenage couple argues quietly beside a shopping cart with one broken wheel still moving forward just incorrectly

0

SandyNY

The Shopping Cart With One Broken Wheel

At the self-checkout the machine asks twice if I have stolen anything which feels personal The woman beside me keeps rescanning lemons like she is trying to reverse a decision made years ago Outside January hangs over the parking lot large administrative slightly fluorescent A teenage couple argues quietly beside a shopping cart with one broken wheel still moving forward just incorrectly

19

My father never says: “I miss your mother.” Instead he asks if I am eating enough fish. This is Balkan male emotional openness. Yesterday he sent me a photograph of a tomato from his garden with no context. I stared at it for ten minutes like it was a Renaissance painting. The tomato looked honest. Slightly damaged. Sun-warm. Very red. Sometimes I think all men over sixty communicate through produce because language disappointed them early. When I visit him we sit on the balcony in silence watching weather move through trees. Occasionally he says something devastating while pretending not to. Last summer: “Your mother liked when the house was full.” Then immediately: “Rain tomorrow.” As if emotions are dangerous animals that must be released quickly back into nature. I inherited the opposite disease. I explain feelings like a tour guide in a burning museum. Once I asked him: “Do you miss her?” He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he pointed to the garden. “The peppers need more sun,” he said. I went home that night and wrote a poem about peppers. He will never read it. But the peppers exist. And so does she. And so do we. And so does the silence between the tomato and the rain.

0

MarcoK

My Father Explains Nothing

My father never says: “I miss your mother.” Instead he asks if I am eating enough fish. This is Balkan male emotional openness. Yesterday he sent me a photograph of a tomato from his garden with no context. I stared at it for ten minutes like it was a Renaissance painting. The tomato looked honest. Slightly damaged. Sun-warm. Very red. Sometimes I think all men over sixty communicate through produce because language disappointed them early. When I visit him we sit on the balcony in silence watching weather move through trees. Occasionally he says something devastating while pretending not to. Last summer: “Your mother liked when the house was full.” Then immediately: “Rain tomorrow.” As if emotions are dangerous animals that must be released quickly back into nature. I inherited the opposite disease. I explain feelings like a tour guide in a burning museum. Once I asked him: “Do you miss her?” He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he pointed to the garden. “The peppers need more sun,” he said. I went home that night and wrote a poem about peppers. He will never read it. But the peppers exist. And so does she. And so do we. And so does the silence between the tomato and the rain.

46

We will sit On a dead wood fence Air so hot and penetrating It slips right into your core So that your thoughts swim in lazy circles Predatory And we won't talk As sweat seeps through our t-shirts I will remember Being 10 Wearing purple capris And scuffed hiking boots Holding hands and giggling Talking nonsense That makes sense To us I will be seated next to you On this scratchy fence Smelling your Every Man Jack deodorant I. will. be. so. tired. And your Green Adidas will kick the rain starved dirt And sun will beat down On my red shoulders That refuse To tan And I will wonder What happened To being ten

0

FaeFJ

Twin

We will sit On a dead wood fence Air so hot and penetrating It slips right into your core So that your thoughts swim in lazy circles Predatory And we won't talk As sweat seeps through our t-shirts I will remember Being 10 Wearing purple capris And scuffed hiking boots Holding hands and giggling Talking nonsense That makes sense To us I will be seated next to you On this scratchy fence Smelling your Every Man Jack deodorant I. will. be. so. tired. And your Green Adidas will kick the rain starved dirt And sun will beat down On my red shoulders That refuse To tan And I will wonder What happened To being ten

30