Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
The 101 slopes like a spine bent too long.
Camarillo yawns wide in the morning hush,
valley stretching slow, hills bare-shouldered,
fields glistening, half-asleep, half-prayer.

Lemon trees blink slow, bruised gold in the mist.
Figtrees call a name behind a rusted gate.
Sagebrush whispers gossip through chainlink,
its breath full of stories that outlive the tellers.

To the east, the nursery stirs,
plastic sheeting *****,
row tags flutter in the wind.
A thermos, abandoned, rests by a wheelbarrow.
Mud boots, discarded,
stand like sentinels
against the wood plank wall.
No footsteps follow.
I never asked where they went.

Matilija poppies raise their paper-white heads,
and the raspberries, furred with morning dew,
shiver, just slightly,
as if remembering friends
they were no longer allowed to say aloud.

A coffee roaster hummed somewhere distant,
low and steady, warming the wind.
That scent I never could shake,
burnt and sweet.
I could almost belong here again,
but it’s not mine without them.

I worked inside this valley with my back.
With my knees.
With the same hands,
now soft on the wheel,
muscle memory steering roads
as if nothing ever left,
as if the ghosts still ride along.

I pass a strawberry field, stitched in silence,
no voices rising in laughter today,
no corrido escaping from a shirt pocket radio,
no teasing between the furrows,
no calloused hands tossing tools,
only the soft ticking of irrigation
and the hush of work
that now waits for no one.
This silence has been swept, labeled,
nothing out of place but sadness.

I was here with them,
but only as a pair of eyes,
that never opened wide enough.

The strip mall stands like a broken promise,
painted stucco, faded western wear,
alongside roadside markets
missing the opening crew.
Still, the hills lean in to listen,
velvet green with memory,
quiet as folded hands.

Even now, under this sun,
the dust knows who knelt here.
Who sang into the rows,
who fled before sundown,
their names erased from the ledger
but carved into the earth.

And in soil’s hush, their names still root and rise.
In the aftermath of the immigration raids, the migrant workers I knew in Southern California, especially in Ventura County, began vanishing overnight. Faces I shared shifts with, broke bread with, waved to across the nursery lots and strawberry rows, disappeared without a word. Their absence is not abstract, it’s in the empty chairs at the diner, the shuttered produce stalls, the silence where songs and stories used to rise. These are the hands we rely on, the hands that shape the harvest, and now they hang suspended in uncertainty. The fields remember them, even when the papers do not.
She entered
like dusk slips through curtains—
slow, deliberate,
never asking
to be noticed.

The lamp flickered.
He watched
as her earrings swung
like pendulums
measuring silence.

She undressed
without touching a seam.
The room tilted
as if memory
had gravity.

His fingers hovered
over the curve of her hip
like a prayer
he no longer believed in.

They moved
like fire learning
its shape
in a spoon of oil—
quiet first,
then chaos.

Somewhere,
a rain began
they could not hear
but tasted
in the salt between breaths.

Then—
stillness.

Not peace,
but aftermath.
She lay back,
a wound wrapped in moonlight.

He stared
at the crack
in the ceiling—
noticing it
for the first time.

The room smelled of iron
and orange peel,
as if something holy
had burned
and vanished.

She left
before the hour turned.
Her body stayed
for days
in the folds of the sheet—
a crease,
a heat,
a warning.

- THE END -

© 2025 June, Hasanur Rahman Shaikh.
All rights reserved.
She didn’t speak—her skin carried the storm.
Jonathan Moya May 28
Aftermath  

The crash happens, and then everything waits.

The tow truck arrives—sleek and gleaming,  
its midnight-black paint absorbing the streetlights  
in a perfect, polished hush.
It is not a wrecker—it is a machine with purpose,  
its curved chassis hugging the ground like a race car—  
the quiet arrogance of a predator.
The hydraulic arm unfolds with practiced precision,  
chrome glinting, not a speck of rust anywhere.

My car, foreign but familiar, hesitates in its wreckage.
A midsize sedan manufactured in a plant  
where workers assembled it with American hands,  
yet its heritage lingers in every curve,  
a design caught between old and new.
Its paint—a muted slate, unassuming—  
shows years of careful touch-ups,  
my own hands smoothing over time and dents itself.
Next to the tow truck, it looks misplaced,  
a junker entered as a joke for the Daytona 500.

The insurance company—AllFarmressive—  
calls twice, their scripted reassurances tumbling  
into contradictions.
"We’ll expedite your claim," they promise,  
but attach an additional note:  
"Due to unforeseen delays,  
processing times may be adjusted  
without prior notice."  
The website insists everything is  
"streamlined and efficient,"  
but each link loops back to the homepage.
Every representative sounds the same,  
pausing at the same beats,  
reading from a script that never quite  
answers the question asked.

The rental car resists.
The screen blinks erratically,  
menus nested inside menus,  
each button press yielding nonsense—  
"Safety Belts Huggings Allowed,"  
"Start Not Start? “  
I jab at the touch screen,  
scrolling through untranslated menus,  
attempting to override locked settings.
Each swipe resets the interface,  
bringing me back to the same blank screen,  
blinking in stubborn refusal.
It moves with a sluggish, uneven pull,  
dragging toward the right,  
forcing me to correct, over and over,  
a silent, insistent opposition.
It does not trust me.
It wants to remind me what happened.

The bumper stays on the sidewalk for three days.
A fractured artifact, curled at one edge,  
its metal warped—something half-melted, half-chewed.
Every dent tells a story,  
some shallow, some deep—  
one an open palm shape,  
another., the edge of a key.
The torn plastic lining exposes the layers beneath,  
each piece folding inward,  
a body returning to itself.
By day four, it is gone.

The streetlights flicker when I drive past.
The pavement hums under my tires,  
a restless, steady vibration.
Somewhere ahead, a distant car horn wails,  
too long, too sharp, disappearing into silence.
The shadows stretch unnaturally in the glow  
of a traffic signal that no longer changes.
Something has shifted.
Something is lingering.

I watch the headlights stretch ahead,  
the road tightens, then vanishes into silence

I know the crash is over,  
but I don’t think it’s done with me.
Carol DeWald Apr 22
Apart
Blaming
Conditional.
Defined by
Expectations
Fears
Grades.
Heavily moving
Into dark.
Joined by anxiety
Keeping it all in.
Longing.
Mad mix of feelings
Never far away.
Only living to please
Pursuing ways to disappear.
Questioning the established.
Repeating behavior.
Secrets.
Temptress
Underneath the mask.
Victimized.
Willingly responsible.
eXit from religion.
Yearning to be special.
Zero confidence.

cbd03/28/25
Lalit Kumar Feb 25
Pages torn, but ink still stains,
Memories whisper through the pain.
She may be gone, but love remains—
A quiet ache in gentle rains.
Nyx Aria Jan 6
Memories of endless heartache,
He mitigated me everyday.
Flip the sign on the door,
We walked out on the sixth floor.

Reminisce the hurt was now less,
Holding on was the mess.
If I was the judge or jury,
I would say, "Guilty."
written on 05/??/2022
Odd Odyssey Poet Dec 2024
__

Put me in place of your heart with no coaster –
unguarded and raw; leaving behind my watermarks.
Elevate it to the brilliance of the one who reignited its
passion, revealing the architect of new love.

I shall attune myself to the melancholic rhythm of
your heartbeats, my fingers gliding over your skin,
eyes closed, crafting your visage in the canvas of my mind.

Even as your kiss bares the cold of your pain,
bestow upon me a devastating kiss, and I vow to ignite
your heart, even if it means extinguishing my own flame.

Must you smother me any less than you’d
love to do, even as the tendrils of your intoxicating
poison envelop me in a silent demise?

Yet, I would pen odes of devotion to you,
sorrowful stanzas of my longing, only to
weep for them in the aftermath.
Lizzie Bevis Nov 2024
I showed you my fractures,
You mapped my vulnerabilities
And instead of healing hands,
You chose to weaken me.

You fed on my collapse
Like a demon drinking pain,
Reading my fears like a scripture,
Playing god with my ruins.

I tried to be your fortress
While you dismantled my walls,
Brick by savage brick,
Until only dust remained.

Now in this hollow aftermath,
You twist the narrative;
I was too distant, too broken.
I became the architect of my fall.

You'll weave your golden lies,
The world will nod and believe.
But these silent scars speak the truth,
As you left a wreckage deep within.

©️Lizzie Bevis
Abbas Dedanwala Nov 2024
we burned like cheap whiskey,
sharp, bitter,
gone too fast,
leaving me with the kind of hangover
you don’t walk off.
you were my way out—
or at least a hope,
a muse, a laugh,
something to hold on to
in this stupid, circular life.

but I was too much,
and not enough.
all my broken pieces,
all your quiet exits.
you looked at me like I was the problem
you couldn’t solve,
and I looked at you like
you could save me.

love doesn’t save anyone.
it guts you.
it leaves you bleeding out
on a ***** floor,
picking through the mess
for anything worth keeping.
I haven’t found it yet.
Next page