I was such a lonely person
And I had no distraction
I put on a face
For other’s satisfaction
My friends were fake
Was I a mistake?
And my name
Is Eleanor Rigby.

I am lost
Floating in a tin can
There’s no hope for survival
When people hear my words
My mind is gone
My mind is scattered like the stars
Still,
My eyes shine as bright as the sun
My heart feels blue
And there’s nothing you can do
And my name
Is Major Tom

Music is my soul
I am an eighth note
Bouncing along a musical staff
The guitar strings intertwine with my heart strings
I’ve got punk rocker vibes
I jam
I twist
I shout
And my name
Is Sheena

He loves me
The way he looks at me
In the moment
I mean everything
His thoughts
He’s confessed
And my name
Is Eileen

My support is endless
My love life brought me down
But my friends lift me up
When I found my one
My friends supported me
And my name
Is Jude

Take off the mask
Remove the disguise
Who am I?
You’re in for a surprise
I am the fixer.
The lover.
The keeper.
I am the ballet dancer
Graceful, yet vulnerable
I am 13, wide-eyed
And naive
I am 30, dealing with more
Than a kid should
Ever see

As time passes
You discover yourself
Become one with yourself
Love yourself
Or hate yourself

As time passes
You grow
Into a brand new being
As time passed
It’s almost as if
My brain said,
“I’ll have sadness
With a bit of
Happy on the side.”

But that has passed.
Time
Has passed.
My brain is
Eating up that
Happy side dish like
There’s no tomorrow.
Now I smile like
I don’t care.
I live in a world
So unaware
Of what lies ahead
And sometimes
Of what fell behind
And my name
Is **Sarah.

"Tree trunks" a  Cruttenden name calling,
lucky  I didn't get a  kick
after french lessons.
Sheena arrived half term
we laughed at her frickles
but envied her stoicism.
After school we smoked our  Capstans
watching the opposition Hockey Captain
up to her neck coughing.
If  I say anything  more
you wouldn't  imagine
I ever  grew up

by Dawn Richardson and Tiffany Ann Boyd

Assembled from works by J.M. Romig, Sheena Zilla, and Ryan P. Kinney

My first memory is of dying.
I felt like I’d lived a full life
And now I was gladly fading away.
My first last words were
“Tell Elizabeth I love her”
I don’t remember knowing Elizabeth.
I love her though, or at least I did in that moment.

“These aren’t sad tears I’m crying, I’m just cutting onions my dear.”
It makes me want to rip off my flesh and run down the street as bare muscle and bone screaming ****** ******.
It will get better once I leave this purgatory waiting room of stress and self-loathing, but until then my outlook is a bit glum.

I am terrified
Before me is a discolored, screaming, clawing, misshapen alien creature
My son takes his first breathes of real air
We are all exhausted
His mother looks at me with a look that practically screams,
“We did it.”
I plead, “But we’re not done doing it yet…
Are we?”
His gurgles turn into cries
And I know…

For some reason, couldn’t tell you why, I thought about Frankenstein’s Monster.

Some parts are really fuzzy,
I hold it close to me- the fuzzy parts against my skin.
It’s a quilt blanket, stitched together of pieces and parts of found cloth.
My father made it for me.
My very last birthday gift.
I cocoon myself in it like a womb.

I hated him for what he’d done, but I hated myself more for missing him.
I have to fight everyday to be a better person in spite of what I was exposed to.

Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

By Brittainy Kasunic
Assembled from works by Sheena Zilla and J.M. Romig

I left you
scrambled on the wall
naked for all to see

Even in this rare moment of content
He feels a wave of manic energy
On the horizon
Rushing toward him like a bullet train
And his muscles tense
In anticipation

“Good girl”
Shadow dropped the bone at my feet.
I picked it up and tossed it back into the endless grass
As it spun like boomerang in the air –

These relics, tokens of breath taken,
Remind me to keep in mind the person I will become.


Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

By Aaron Kasunic

Assembled from works by Ryan P. Kinney, J.M. Romig, and Sheena Zilla

I am in her arms
Having been told, “No”
And resigned to rejection so many times
So many times I told myself that this would never happen
As my lips touch hers
I laugh inside my head
“Is this really happening?”
This is really happening.

I called you art,
poetry,
even…honesty.

I hold my breathe
I can see him through the window
As I have seen him through the electronic window of my TV for years
As I get closer this feel less and less real
This is my hero
My God

She broke my heart.
I was a business tycoon,
A man of great wealth
I could have anyone I wanted,
but not her.
She didn’t know what she wanted. She needed guidance.
So I found her, and we both got what we really wanted.
I always get what I want…
…I don’t like this memory.

I won’t say the word regret,
because I don’t
I won’t say the word sorry
because I’m not.

I will say that with age comes perspective
and with perspective
comes introspection and –

The well of my youth is no longer a place I can drink from.

The destruction of the self is intolerable,
Everyone tells me
To destroy myself is acceptable,
Little round pills


Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

Assembled by Danielle Romig
From works by Vicki Acquah, Mark Antony Rossi, Ryan P. Kinney, Dr. Benjamin D. Anthony, Gabriella Ercolani, Sheena Zilla, JM Romig

Splash, Splash I was taking a bath during global warming;
How many times has rain ruined my day
There enough pain to make the whole world shed tears.
I’m still plodding on
One foot in front of the other
Cracks are wide open; slipping through them is easy
Hear the sound of fighting to the south and the west
We all stuck here waiting to be casualties

As you wipe the days work from your forehead.
In the empty spaces
everything fades to black.
If time is fluid, like the oceans
Then maybe I’m glancing over as a wave breaks
I know that you may not see it now, but time really will heal these wounds.

Created at the Jigsaw Workshop at Cleveland Concoction 3/2/2019