(For Amen Teklay, Kayden Moy, and every child lost too soon)


In just two months, two lives were lost,
To blades that cut through more than frost.
Amen, just fifteen, fell in March—
On Glasgow’s street beneath the arch.

No warning bell, no time to run,
His story ended, barely begun.
Three boys arrested, young as him—
Innocence drowned, futures grim.

Ten weeks on, the pain still raw,
Kayden found on Irvine’s shore.
Sixteen years, a beach, a knife—
Another boy stripped of his life.

Between these deaths, the toll runs high—
Eleven more hurt under Scotland’s sky.
Sixteen teens cuffed, charged, or tried,
While parents ask, Why has hope died?

A 13-year-old at Asda’s door,
A blade in hand, still wanting more.
Two twelve-year-olds in Lenzie fight,
Left another boy bleeding in night.

Stonehaven shook on March fifteen—
An 18-year-old stabbed on the green.
Eight days after, a child of eleven
Caught with a blade at a funfair heaven.

Kinghorn Beach—thirty in a mob,
Four boys battered, blood-soaked, robbed.
Portobello echoed with sirens' sound—
Three teens stabbed, dropped to the ground.

In Aberdeen, a girl of twelve
Cut by another—what dark spell
Turns children into sharpened rage,
And steel the ink on every page?

A seven-year-old, knife in class—
What lessons did we let him pass?
Three schools, three knives, in children’s hands—
Where did we lose the line we planned?

Two names carved into fresh-dug graves,
While headlines scroll like crashing waves.
Amen. Kayden. Just the start—
A nation tearing at its heart.

This isn’t distant, isn’t past—
These weeks have sliced through us so fast.
How many more must we allow
To fall beneath what we allow?

What justice sleeps while young blood spills?
What silence keeps us standing still?
If two months wrought this ****** toll,
We’ve lost control. We’ve lost control

My body is not my own
Pass it along to anyone
And my heart doesn’t live inside
I have nowhere to hide it
And the places I’ve called home
They are not my home
I think I used to feel differently
but now I don’t know

You always had a place to go
You always had someone to hold
I had to listen to you fight at night
And now I’m alone

I know you never loved me
Sometimes I still want you to touch me
Down in the trenches
You always knew what to provoke
so I’d never come to my senses

And it’s mostly all my fault
It would be easier to say I blame you
I was too young
I didn’t know
I was hurt
It wasn’t my decision
but it was mine to make
Still,
I can’t take it back
I cannot escape
It has nothing to do with you
anymore, anyways

It all crescendos to inaction
And floods my interactions
It all feels too big
It’s in a cloud
above my head
And I can’t reach it
The intangible
weight of grief
I am a miserable
ghost of me

the circles of time so possible. the hero radicalises the mirrors. in the middle of seeing a barricade, we don't know how to overcome it's truth. reality fights with itself. i have no one to cry with. time is dripping. the violence of words. the violence of thoughts. the violence of lies. the violence of dreams. the violence of reducing life to a grammatical structure. the violence of destroying what is real. there is violence on every side. there is hope. words are weapons for massification. the captive mind needs a voice. the innocent mind sleeps in a fragile bed.
i cry alone. you cry alone too. a woman cried alone among passersby. crying together it's unthinkable on an ordinary day. is it freedom that is dripping hour by hour, day by day?
the show goes on, let's make peace a fake in remake. no famine in Gaza cause people got used to eating stones. the news is incessantly breaking. an invisible menticide, our digital fingers won't recognize what kind of substance the skin is. laughter is not enough for everybody.  i watch the clouds decomposing themselves with eagerness. everything is what is supposed to be.  closed minds in closed bodies. birds are carrying our thoughts like broken paddles.
the permafrost of drama can finally see the daylight. violence is unbearable for me. a circle is closing, a new one begins.

Everyone says I’m brave.
But all I did was sit still
while the world turned to fang.

God said,
Let there be skin
then peeled it back
like he wanted to see
if I still believed in mercy.

Teeth undid what I thought was mine,
like I got bored of metaphors
and decided to speak in tendon.

No poetry. Just flesh.
Just cartilage and fear
and me holding my nose
like a dropped heirloom,
still warm.

No one tells you
how heavy your own skin feels
when it’s not holding you together,
when you have to carry it
like a question
you never wanted to answer.

Later, in the mirror,
I told myself the story
with no adjectives.
Just nouns.
Just blood.
Just the new shape of my nose,
a crescent of punctures,
a crater like an in-ground pool.

And now I’m supposed to go back
to smiling dimples across rooms,
and writing my poems like
the rupture was allegory,
not aftermath.

Like language can cauterize,
as if I haven’t already buried
a thousand versions of myself
in lowercase lines,
soft stanzas,
and good behavior.

The doctor asked,
“Was it provoked?”
And I didn’t know
if he meant the dog
or me.

Because I have spent
my whole life
provoking things
into loving me
just enough
to ruin me.

I did not scream.
I’ve done this before;
Not with teeth,
but close.

No growl. Just gravity.
Then pressure where my future had been.
Then everything changed shape.
Blood—an old language
I thought I’d forgotten—
spelled its name down my arm.

The man at urgent care said,
“You’re very calm.”
I said thank you.
I meant:
I know how to bleed quietly.

The doctor said,
“You’re lucky it didn’t take more.”
And I nodded.
Like that was comfort.
Like that wasn’t a prophecy.

My face folded
like a map that’s been touched
by too many hands,
headed toward too many things
that never happened.

I keep dreaming
the dog comes back.
But not like revenge.
Like confirmation.

He finds me again,
points to the place that never bruised,
and says,
Here. This is where it lives now.
Then opens his mouth
and finishes what he started.

The heather weeps, a purple bruise,
Across the glens, the chilling news.
No bagpipes drone a mournful sound,
But sirens wail on hallowed ground.
A thistle bleeds, its prickling crown,
As innocence is stricken down.
Young eyes, once bright with Highland fire,
Now gleam with something dark and dire.
The steel they flash, a twisted boast,
A stolen childhood, dearly lost.
Each shadowed lane, a whispered fear,
Of blades that gleam and futures near,
Consumed by rage, a hollow pride,
Where youthful dreams have gone to hide.
Parents clutch, with hearts ablaze,
Afraid to loose in this iron maze.
The ancient stones, they stand and stare,
At broken vows and whispered prayer.
Can Scotland rise, her spirit mend,
And teach these children how to bend,
The steel to craft, the hands to heal,
And learn the wounds are truly real?
To trade the blade for open hand,
And reclaim peace within the land.

Once upon a time
a father with his belt –
(with black shiny paint
and a steel which is melt)

And a son, a pen in his hand
A book by his side
A lamp blowing light
Tears in his eyes
The fear in his veins
With his wimped tiny mole

(A cry in his neck and
a gulp in his bones)

Whimp whimp strikes the ground
Wipes the tears,picks up his pen
Shakes up his head,
Gives him a cloth,
to blow up his nose

(A smile on the boy's face
The fallen tear on the page's lace
It dried his shake on hand and
moved him a pace)

Whimp, whimp, whimp – strikes again
(A posed fear on son's face)
Whimp, and he strikes again
(The clueless child, shakes with his pain )

The blats on the floor
and its black remains
The years of slaps
which slashed up cement

(He comes back..
drops his belt   )

A relief in boy's breath

The steel fallen,
relief is felt

The father with his red hands
(Blood flows out at a spot's end )
Smiles at the son

Dark is his eyes like year's repent

(A strung in his mind
He shakes only once,
As he picks up his belt)

He sits on his couch and
acts as he had a father –
with a belt-
(with its black shiny paint and
a steel which is melt.)

There she lies curled on a cold concrete slab
Eviscerate midsection gushing blood
And her face and clothes are ***** and drab
Ruinated thoroughly with thrown mud

Sometimes I wonder if we're wielding rage
In service to the worship of our self
Never realizing our flaws and their wage
Tucked them away on an overlooked shelf

Hearing her husband's heart-weary crying
Ever we play the unsatisfied spouse
Villains pursuing which leaves love dying
Ever we plot to be first in the house

I guess you're right as I stare at the floor
Left gut-stabbed, she can't hurt us anymore

He who shall not be named,
Is the beginning, the creator, the cause
Of the rewiring, and the broken pieces to my brain
For I was just only 18 years old
He was a little older, maybe 20
But what he put me through
Felt like a world of hell, eternally
For I was not experienced, I was a ******
It all changed after the night I gave in,
With barely an ounce of courage
For after that, he changed and became sexually enraged
I didn't want it like he did, My life was becoming a bid
I would lock myself in the bathroom like it was a hidden cage
Only because he forced himself upon me and I always cringed
He tried busting through the door!
So I got really scared and started shouting
I WON'T LET YOU DO THIS ANYMORE!!
But it didn't help, a house full of people
And all I could do was silently cry, and welp
Being dragged back to the bedroom that I now hated
Feeling so disrespected, so misguided, so jaded
I would tell him no, please don't do this
He'd look at me and tear my clothes off,
With an eager look in his eyes, as he's licking his lips
I'd push him away, I'd push him off of me!
But he was stronger and he held me down!
He covered my face with a pillow, hollowing out the sound
A house full of people, and they thought I was just going to town
After a while I gave up and let him just have it, have me
And every relationship after that, was the same
Yet, somehow, so much more differently
The bruises I had developed on the inside of my legs
Were always blue and purple, and sometimes even beat red!
Only the punishment didn't stop there, that's where it began
He treated me like I was part of a *******
Like I was just some pig he wanted to hurt and hang
After 6 months, I finally told him I needed space
I don't know how I managed to gather the strength
To look this monster in his eyes, straight to his face
I told him, I said,
"You need to leave and never come back to this place!"
The next day I told everyone who was there at the house
But no one believed me, so I continued to live in trauma
All by myself, and all alone, and as silent as a mouse.
For he was the first person to introduce me into a world like that
Which is something I'm trying my hardest to let go of and forget!


Stephanie A. Ludwig
04/24/2025

It's two or three in the morning and I'm sound asleep
Next thing I know, I'm being woken up,
No longer peaceful, or dreaming of cows and sheep
Woken up with his arm around my neck, squeezing my throat
It's two or three in the morning and I just want to sleep
I never did anything to this person, he was just a mean creep
Meanwhile, I'm being choked for refusing to get up
To make him a sandwich. Of all sandwiches, a PB&J
My first reaction to this encounter was to scream or shout
But I couldn't, I couldn't move, and I could barely breathe
That's when I knew this wasn't a man who loved me
This was a boy who had problems being told no, accordingly
I took my free arm, and I used all the strength I had left
And I slapped him in his face, hard as I could just to break free
Then it escalated and I was thrown out of the room, violently
His whole family was there, as it was a farmhouse
From the recent incident, I had new found holes in my night blouse
But when it all came to the light, I was somehow at fault
I'm the one who got choked, and treated like dirt
But everyone took his side, and that simply.. Hurt
His whole family came at me, and attacked me verbally
When I told my side of the story, they just looked at me like I was crazy
There was no way he could "hurt someone, especially a woman physically"
I knew then and there, that I was on my own
I stayed. I don't know why. But I stayed.
Things kept happening, but the final straw
was when we went out of town
We went to PA to pick up his cousin,
what a mistake that was for me,
As I was too blind to come to terms with what was already known
He was cheating on me with this girl.
Treating her like gold, like she was the only woman in the world
I couldn't believe my eyes, or my ears when it all came to light
I stood there like a fool, trying to preach my case, trying to fight
For a boy who pretended to be a caring man
Only to find out, he was playing family with his own cousins hand
After a year and a half, I decided to leave
Because it wasn't worth suffocating, when I needed to breathe
To this day, I still find it so hard to believe
That he ultimately chose his own cousin over me.
I was just the victim in his story, obviously.
But he was nothing but a simple minded person to his family
It was a scary time for me as I was so young
But like they always say, fools fall in love
While being, young and dumb
I'm just grateful I could get away from this evil one.


Stephanie A. Ludwig
04/24/2025