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Lauren T Aug 14
The salt air reminds me of the time I was five
And dad took us to the beach
I almost drowned
In the frigid water I’d just
Wanted to play with the waves
Sometimes I’m five again
When I spot a seagull flying high
And wonder if it was there that day
When I hear the crashing water
And ask myself what went wrong
When I feel sand under my toes
And know it’ll always be a part of me
I’m back at the beach
With my dad and my brother
And the salt water tastes the same
As the campfire in the forest
As the books on my nightstand
As the house I don’t recognize
As the way it’ll never be the same
The little girl tumbles over
And over
And over
Until she’s pulled out gasping yet silent
Tearful yet breathing
Now I stand again on the beach
With my dad and my brother
And stare at the waves
That’ll always be here long
After the five year old girl is
Gone
they never taste it
just name the temperature
call it healing when I rinse the wound
like I’m not just keeping it from festering long enough
to stay pretty

I let them near
not in
they cup their hands to the faucet
sip whatever slips through the cracks
and call it closeness
but they never stay long enough
to feel the sting

I swallow static
talk in softened sounds
bite down on my sharpened tongue
translate their language
before they can call mine foreign..
again

I bleed behind a smile
they call me safe
like I haven’t been carrying a fire in my throat
for years

sometimes I scream into a drain
just to hear what doesn’t echo back.
sometimes I open my mouth
and it’s all salt
and no water.

I’ve spent too long cleaning the mess
before they step inside
apologizing for the shape of me
before they even ask the question

now I gargle saltwater
until my voice is too raw to speak
until silence feels more honest
than telling the truth
to someone who won’t keep it

let them ask
let them knock
let them misname my ritual.
I’ll be in the quiet
spitting out blood
like it’s poetry
and still being called beautiful
for surviving.
A reflection on what it means to survive without being seen - and how people mistake the cleanup for the healing. This piece is about masking, emotional labor, and the hollow praise that comes with being palatable. I didn’t write it to be called brave. I wrote it because silence has teeth.
Kai Mar 19
when you were born,
a shy summer snow,
they said:
“bear the burden of this world on your shoulders.”

to you,
a sauna in the snow,
they said:
“give us water. quench our thirst.”
and so you brought forth steam,
and gathered humid dews,
and sweat salt,
and wrung water into their maws.
and so they sweltered, and still—
they were thirsty.

you say:
“i bring no water. i quench no thirst. and thus i fail.”
i say:
“give me heat. give me humidity. give me heart.”
“give me whatever you want to give.”
and you do,
and from this heat i sweat,
and from this warmth i cry,
and aren’t my tears water?

to you,
a shy summer snow,
they said:
“give us water. quench our thirst.”
and so you melted,
and dissolved into the current,
lost into salted misery.

you were born not to bear burdens
but to love and be loved
to live, to laugh, to sweat, to cry,
and aren’t your tears water?
my snowstorm, my sauna
the salt i sweat for you
cry for you
is the sweetest nectar.
our modern post-capitalist society punishes people when they fail to do a level of work no one was ever born to do. (neurodivergent people tend to take the first fall here…)

i hate watching my loved ones blame themselves for failing. i hate seeing them think they’re not “good enough”. it’s the demand itself which should be blamed.
sunflower Jan 29
let the water
trickle past your fingers,
like memory,
falling through the holes in your
head, cloudy, tattered.
let your head,
as fluffy as clouds,
brush up against stars,
constellations of
legends, of sodium
and potassium hallucinations.
sometimes people lie.
let the air
brush each
and every alveoli of your lungs,
each gyri and
sulci of your brain.
taste the salt --
sweat, the sea, your blood.
let the iron,
stable, sunbright
iron, carry itself
with the poise of
a red giant --
both radient,
striking, bleeding vermillion
and crimson.
stable, like a mountain,
letting rain run
itself over with the gentle
caress of an old lover,
who knows the contours and the
dips of the body,
and yet is getting --
reacquainted with it,
after a long time away.
the sweat of the
maker sticks to
the threads that
weave to make the library that makes
you, that
holds information, holds itself
in letters,
quartets, spirals.
taste the salt.
the wind sounds like the sea,
outside my bedroom window,
when it's too late
for my eyes to have
not made
their coupling of
the night.
imagine the salt-mist,
bright and cold on your
face, like the
splatter of blood,
leaking out of a nose;
like a river flowing
from precipitation, mist,
downstea, rejoining where it once
came from, where it was
always going to end up.
fate is a funny thing.
they say that every cell
of yours gets replaced
every seven years.
i wonder how long it takes salt,
iron --
to rise and to
fall,
like the eight minutes
the light of the
sun follows to get
here, to our
little pinprick eyes,
to our dopamine
and norepinephrine,
the spikes and
dips of neurons, firing.
how many heartbeats, breaths?
how many crashes of waves?
i wrote this after a truly terrible lecture that included a "poetry" writing bit exept it was SOOO constrained, like so formulaic. what if i want to express my emotions with fish. what then.
Like sparkling water, your breath punctuates every gulp—
Sharp and cold, I come back for more,
At your behest—like saffroned ice cubes on the eyelids.
A sober delight.

Scrubbing the grout in between the tiles with black salts,
Pale like drying sunscreen, piercing my palate with cedar—
Where did the subtlety go?
The Cosmos—Short Fiction
Amanda Kay Burke Nov 2024
My heart burns without presence

Your mouth says my name and voice still sounds the same

The inner damsel in me fights way through my flesh

Leading her by glow of all the potential I set on fire

My hot skin itches for touch while yours is soothed by a thick coat of reassurance

Is medicated by unwavering dose of devotion

My wound so raw and pain so sharp knives flee in fear of injury

My blood screaming for recognition

Like how many drops must be spilled for you to acknowledge I'm dying?

How many cuts appear before you notice I'm not well?

Hell
At this point begging for my tissue to be pulled in two directions and a massive amount of sodium chloride poured in
Would relish the agonizing
Unpredicted sting
Because at least that means I can tell you know I'm not alright

You seem to understand exactly where to rub the salt in
Not where to bandage
Written 6-19-19
Emery Feine Oct 2024
"I am a part of you,"
Is what I say to the waves below
My eyes, the same shade of blue
As the ocean's tide glows

I taste the salt in my mouth
As it drips from my swollen eyes
The same salt in the whale's spout
That in which the ocean lies

From the lighthouse I watch the rocky shore
And my eyes leak more and more
What more could I want of me
Than to be part of that glimmering sea?

I do not even exist anymore
As I sprint across the rocky shore
I collapse into the shimmering sea
Because a part of them is a part of me

The townspeople call me crazy
I'll prove them all wrong one day
I still taste the salt in my mouth
I think I am fading away

The sun is setting on the beach
And salty tears are running down my face
I connect my tears with the water
And disappear without a trace

Stars appear in the night sky
Reflecting on the sea's blue
Below the waves, you'll find me lie
Am I finally a part of you?
this is my 124th poem, written on 9/10/24. this was originally submitted to the Salty September poetry competition :)
Through history many things have
     Been used as money.  These also
          Had other uses.  Homes, tobacco
               Salt, gold, beads, shells, feathers.
                    We’ve never had just pure money
                         Which is also scarce and portable.
                              Therefore
               ­          Let’s use a money that acts only
                    As money, not a commodity that
               Is sometimes money and other
          Times used as something else.  
     Bitcoin is pure money, and also
Scarce, portable, and divisible.
You can see this poem on a background here - https://www.bitcoinpoems.pro/delivery113PureMoney.html
nick armbrister Aug 2024
And Yours?
Tell the world your story
Share all of your experiences
Working in that type of job
For 7 long ******* years
It wasn’t bad or good
It was what it was
A bit of everything
All thrown together
Life death in-between
There was music and song
Books and stories
Film and video
Each to their own
We endure differently
My trip is mine
What is yours?
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