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Malia Oct 2024
it feels like locking
the door on your loyal dog
who loved unconditionally
and saved you from your
sorrowful depths,
but you must go and
all things must end, though,
can’t you hear the whining
through the cracks?
can’t you hear the groan
through the cracks in the spine
made from opening what must
always
be shut?
Looseleft:

adj. feeling a sense of loss upon finishing a good book, sensing the weight of the back cover locking away the lives of characters you’ve gotten to know so well.
QueenOfTheAshes Sep 2024
Lonely bones
Skin stuck to your muscle stones
Hold me but make me feel empty
It feels like you're loving me *****.

And why do I want to hate you
When you swear your love's true?
Look at my heart, blue
Act like you don't have
A clue.

But I can see through you
Love pretends
We can make amends
But somehow,
It always ends.
Erwinism Sep 2024
Will I ever reach you
when there are tides surging and sweeping anything in between?

Have you seen something on these stair steps winding within?

Wild-eyed hope scurry into the woods of the night to heed the call,

wasted so many years growing up to find nothing beyond these walls.

I falter hearing blood and friends are in their ways broken, but all I do is listen and pretend to understand,

decipher encrypted messages of fate engraved in their calloused hands.

We are spent being rogue satellites looking for a sign of life,

fledgling wanderers cut by thorns through age made contrite.

When time plucks us out of the tree I’m hoping to pop up somewhere where the sun is free,

unlike this place where the end is only thing guaranteed.

And you and I laugh about it, a reprieve from crying out of sight,

so we hide behind comforting lies,
for the hurt is in the try.

It’s hard to own a face
in a confined and crowded space,

quietly we must go
and in time, leave without a trace.

Yet, though there are waves between us, let me know when you find a beacon guiding you back to the shore,

that unseen in the great unknown, there is much left unexplored.
Stephen Knox Sep 2024
Who makes these rules for this world that we live.
Extracting from us things we never would give.

They’re tied to a time back far as it goes.
They have methods to control us that nobody knows.

Kemet, then Babylon is from which they did rise.
I see all they’ve done through heterochromian eyes.

Separate from those, that we think are in charge.
This group has grown smaller, but was never large.

The things I won’t tell of would give you a fright
Those that should know have been granted the sight.

The positive side of our nature will rise.
Letting us see them without their disguise.

The light that is coming, will show that their grift.
Must come to an end as the world begins to shift.
Bansi Adroja Jul 2024
It wasn't just one thing

It was the minutes that felt like hours idling in the driveway
not wanting to go inside

It was the solo trips to the supermarket
for some space to breathe
just a moment of relief

It was the feeling in the pit of my stomach knowing that I was running late
and it would end in a fight

It was the time you made me cry on my birthday
or any random Tuesday

It was the not knowing who I was anymore

It was never being enough
because it was never just one thing
blank Jun 2024
drywall graveyards
tacks stabbed through ghosts
buried and legible and moss-bearing

you never leave flowers
but you still remember; will
even with creasing palms of
papercuts and old printer ink

in a lot of ways you're still sliding across main street
graphite-stained and bleary
surrounded by cymbals
and freezing condensation
and pinpricks in your fingers

in a lot of ways you're still feeding her clementines,
her veins bic-blue and eyes alight
near clear with
spirits realer than you

in every way you're crumpled and jagged on the floor
the swaying kitchen table

you're talking to a fragment,
a figment handing you bottles to
burn your tongue and your throat and wait
for what?

for your self-portrait to dry once and for all;
for footsteps echoing down the stairs;
for long-decayed maple helicopters to activate;

for the dears to fall behind your bed and stay there
title from "emotional rent control" by cheekface.

written in june 2023. reflections post-pandemic, post-college-graduation, post-friendships, post-becoming
Looking up at me with dandelion glass baubles for eyes,
Say, "What about tomorrow?"
I shake my head down at you from my magnificent children's playset
My neck cracks when I **** it to the side
I whisper in singsong,
"I think we should stop."
How do you let someone down easy without letting them down so hard?
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