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Ashlyn Yoshida Apr 2020
Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in a house full of shadows and mirrors with no one to help her out but herself. Cobwebs covered the corners and her feet and her eyes. At some point she had given up from leaving and stayed still for years. One day, there was a knock on the door and the girl shivered off her webs and slowly walked over to the locked door to set her ear against the cold wood. She didn't hear anything else other than a shuffle and the sound of footsteps walking away. The girl went back to her place where she had stood and found a crack of light across the mirror. Desperate to see and to escape the shadows she tried moving the mirror to reflect the light tenfold. But she pushed too hard and the mirror feel and shattered. She sat there in the broken glass, blood dripping from her legs. She sat there and cried, angry for the hope she had gotten. And she stayed still for another year until a knock at the door was heard again. This time she ignored it. She ignored it so well, she thought, that even when it got louder she turned her head, piercing her feet on the glass that still lay around her. She muffled a scream and listened to the knocking. It had stopped, why had it stopped? She got up to check the door, wincing in pain at each step. But when she pressed her ear against the door once more, the sound was gone and replaced with the echoing footsteps of someone leaving. The girl, angered, stomped back to her place only to see the light again. She felt excited and tried to at least touch the light, hold it in her hands to feel warm. She took a step forward, crashing into the mirror that had been reflecting it, once more breaking the reflective glass. More blood and pain and tears. The next time she saw the light or heard the knocking she ignored it.
It took years, each one annually the knocking came and went and the light feel across the girl in her cobwebs, shadows, and mirrors in a locked up house that no one noticed, wanted, or saw. She felt more and more alone with each coming day, the knocking the only thing that made her happy because it meant that something living was there at the other side of the door. If only she could open it.
One the day she decided to give up all thoughts of meeting the one who knocked at her door, she stood up and walked across the glass, tearing her feet. She crashed into mirrors, ****** and bruised she reached the door and leaned against it, crying.
When she heard the knocking she cried harder. The knocking continued, three even knocks. A pause. And then three even knocks. It would do this one last time. The girl was fed up with the knocking by now, so she decided to do it to them, too. She knocked back three times after the second knock of theirs. She waited. The knock came from them. She knocked back. It continued until the light in the house moved to the mirror in front of her fully and she saw herself, blood and tear stained in the reflection. She smiled at herself. She heard something move, something metal slide from underneath her door. Something cold touched her fingertips as she wrapped her hand around it. A rusty old key. She used it to unlock the door to see who had been knocking for her all those years. She opened the door.
And there the girl was, smiling back at herself. "You made it."
The End
ignore the formatting
Myka Apr 2020
xvi
Sun and moon, day and night,
Light and dark, good and evil.
They say God created everything
for a reason,
so what of the Devil?

I've heard stories,
of witches and werewolves.
But the Devil,
they say he walks among us,
living in the shadows,
and speaking in whispers.

They say God created everything
for a reason,
that He made man in His image,
so why did He put the Devil in me?
This is for the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. The Man Without Fear.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.

Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge . . . then drown.

We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,

tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low

for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men . . .
when we were men, or almost so.

Published by Homespun and Mind in Motion. This poem was written either in high school or my first two years of college because it appeared in the 1979 issue of my college literary journal, Homespun. Keywords/Tags: shadows, dark, walls, evening, starlight, moonlight, men, souls, drowning, phantoms, shades
M Grant Teague Apr 2020
Harsh light still casts shadows,
Some never seen,
But always felt.

Darkness too often is stuck in the sight,
But the deepest I know lives in the light.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Premonition
by Michael R. Burch

Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.  

They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their bright laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...

and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...

and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.

And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their words are unreadable runes
unlikely to stand in this waterlogged land
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...

You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it’s something to be loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, outshining the night
and all the stars ringed high above ...

and you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.

I vividly remember writing this poem after an office party the year I co-oped with AT&T (at that time the largest company in the world, with a lot of office parties). This was after my sophomore year in college, making me around 20 years old. The poem is “true” except that I was not the host because the party was at the house of one of the managers. Nor was I dating anyone seriously at the time.

Keywords/Tags: premonition, foreboding, time, loss, death, office party, wine, laughter, shadows
Francie Lynch Apr 2020
The sun sets later,
There's more to see.
The shadows that follow us
Grow longer,
But the nights are shorter;
And the brilliance of morning
Splashes us with a new day
Nothing can disparage.
We have unclimaxed stories,
With heroes not yet heralded.
There is hope in our shadows,
There is peace at dusk.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;
if shadows fly
the sickled sky,
while children toss their heads
uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;
if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams
of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise
to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,
while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies . . .

it's Halloween!

Keywords/Tags: Halloween, graveyard, shadows, sickle, moon, witch, witches, goblins, serpents, spirits, ghosts, sibyls, Devil
Ayesha Apr 2020
You inflicted pain,
Spoke silence,
Your words would,
Cower before.
You settled in me,
Hate,
For myself.
A thorn grew,
Out of the earth,
Where a rose,
Should've thrived.
You became,
The worst in me,
As I live,
Down this road.
You rest,
I bid you peace.
I carry on,
A mask of the other,
The soul,
Of those gone.
I grew thorns,
Another came,
And cherished me,
Gave me flesh,
And I see the next bloom.
But,
Like the rose,
It would not last,
As a thing of beauty,
Never does.
You see,
The thorn was prickled,
Kept hidden to not hurt,
But the rose,
That was the other part,
Became,
What the world would want.
The cherisher,
Would look in a year,
And the thorn would smile.
It would be one,
Of false hope,
Because,
The pain,
Of a broken heart,
Is a realm,
Entirely of its own.
Few would dive,
And see,
The thorn would survive...
But,
Just barely.
Noura Mar 2020
A pondering shadow, I see
The time I stop my travels
And settle down, for a glimpse
Of the inside world
The shadow is so tall, tall and dark
Its face, indiscernible
But its eyes, they look at me
With amazement, or pity
I cannot tell
I could never tell
So complicated
So distant
I am trying to understand you, Shadow,
Please, turn on the light, and let me in.
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