The cavern breathes.
Its walls slick with time, with damp, with secrets.
It has seen centuries of footsteps,
but tonight, it watches.
Above, the sky stretches wide—
galaxies shifting, burning,
too far, too indifferent
to witness what he has done.
She is beneath him.
Was beneath him.
Her breath stolen, her body cooling,
the fight long gone from her limbs.
He had taken what he wanted.
More than that.
Everything.
Now, only the cavern knows.
His hands, trembling now, touch the stone.
His chest heaves.
Guilt? Regret?
No—something deeper, something worse.
And then, he screams.
The sound rips through the cavern,
tearing against rock,
splitting the silence open
like a wound.
The walls tremble.
The ground shifts.
The cavern awakens.
For a breath, it grieves.
For a breath, it remembers her.
Then, it judges.
The air thickens.
The trembling stops.
His voice is taken,
flung into the void,
cast to the stars
never to return.
This is his punishment.
Not death.
Not solitude.
But silence.
The last tether to her,
severed.
Once, she pressed her palm to his chest.
Felt the hum of breath.
The warmth of skin.
The pulse of something real.
Now—nothing.
The cavern swallows the last echo.
Above, the universe turns on,
uncaring.
And the stars—
they do not grieve for him.
Reflection:
This poem is about justice—true, raw justice. The kind that human hands often fail to deliver. He took everything from her, stripping her of dignity, of breath, of life itself. But the world, the universe, does not punish men like him. They walk free, justified by excuses, shielded by silence.
But the cavern does not forget. It listens. It knows what he has done. And so, in a world where men take and walk away unscathed, the cavern becomes the reckoning. It takes the only thing left to take—his voice, his ability to be heard, his existence as something that matters. It does what the world refuses to do.
His punishment is not death. That would be too simple, too kind. Instead, he is erased, left in a silence that mirrors the silence he forced upon her. A silence that echoes forever, but never back to him.
And the stars? The universe? They do not grieve. Because this was never about them.
This is about her.
Copyright © Douglas Crabtree | Year Posted 2025
In the quiet of the evening’s glow,
Two hearts whisper promises, soft and slow.
With every star that lights the night,
Their love shines pure, a guiding light.
The Dance of Hearts
Upon the winds, their spirits fly,
Twirling beneath the vast, open sky.
In rhythm, their souls gently sway,
In a dance of love, day by day.
Timeless Embrace
A love that transcends the hands of time,
In every heartbeat, a gentle rhyme.
Their souls entwined, forever bound,
In the silence, their truth is found.
Blossoms of Love
Like blossoms in the springtime air,
Their love blooms with tender care.
Each petal whispers stories untold,
In this garden of hearts, love unfolds.
Eternal Flame
A flame that flickers, never fades,
In shadows and light, their love pervades.
Through life's seasons, come what may,
An eternal flame guides their way.
Love's Symphony
In harmony, their lives compose,
A symphony of highs and lows.
With every note, their love ascends,
A melody that never ends.
Copyright © SENDY THELUSMA | Year Posted 2025
I know you feel heavy inside
Like the weight of the world is too much to bear.?
You carry a burden no one can see,
?And it feels like you are fading unnoticeable?
Into the air.
But listen...
You are not the unwanted one.?
I see you.?Your pain, your struggle
they matter.
?You are here, and that means something.
The silence you feel isn't the end.?
It's a moment, a purpose,?
Before you find your voice again.
You are more than the darkness that surrounds you.?
It's okay to feel lost,
?But don't mistake it for being forgotten.
You are worth more than these thoughts.?
And no matter how quiet the world goes,?
You still matter.
I promise you, the storm isn't forever.?
You will rise.
?You are stronger than you think.?
The pain is not your forever.
And I believe in you, even when you don’t.
Copyright © Kobe D. Wleh | Year Posted 2025
TRAPPED
Reslise me from my prison , entrapt within this haze . Caught within this cloud of smoke , reflection looking crazed . Stolen by addiction the days have turned to years . I feel the beast inside me as his feeding on my fears . My screams for help are silenced , the words replaced by pain . It calls me from the shadows it knows I can't restrain . Emerging from the sorrow of the darkness where I hide . Stepping threw the puddles , of a 1000 tears I've cried . I'm drowning in addiction held under by mky greed . I'm trapped within this knightmare I feel I can't be freed . This demon that I speak of the beast I can't hold back . Is simply my addiction to a drug the world calls crack
Copyright © Kyle Perrett | Year Posted 2025
They are too foggy,
Dreams, visions, etc.;
I don’t know, I don’t remember,
but o’ wait!
Yes, a distinct memory.
I started remembering words
hoarse, dry words mixed
with the lemonade air.
a conversation?
The smell of heated leather
chains me to the patio
where the goddess sits.
I have lost faith in her,
no longer a goddess
but my birthmother.
The second person in this conversation.
'Bitter sweet or sweetly bitter',
asking the nicotine-filled air.
A head emerges through the smoke,
mingling with the lesser being.
She exhales pure ash
and stares, ocean to mildew eyes.
‘Bitter sweet.’
Why, I ached to ask her
but it refused to come out,
my lips a graveyard.
Fruit trees,
beautiful ones.
Aristaeus but never Eileithyia,
my mother.
Leaves and Vines blend with the
anger that my mother had,
not anymore
malt as its replacement.
I wanted to try her cigarette,
the one kissed tenderly by her two lips now.
My fingers turn
black.
Black as black can be,
emission at the seams of my nails
up to the pretty blonde strands of my mother’s hair.
I wonder, lips formed
to ask, maybe.
‘Mascara,’ she answers,
knowing the question
before it escaped my tongue
and ventured into her ears.
Because we are entwined, now,
black and volcanic
two minds, one body
no
two bodies, one mind.
I wince,
the band-aids refuse to help;
including the Arnold ones
I used to put on myself.
Bittersweet.
My cuts grow bigger
until it resembled the cracks of the earth;
and ate my blue bike
and the ghost house I used to live in,
her being the one to haunt them.
‘You blame,’
who says.
‘You lie,’
says the other.
Not a conversation anymore,
but furious eruptions,
ruinous pertinence.
It was calamitous and vulgar,
glorious culmination,
as it destroyed everything;
leaving nothing but cinder,
carried by the wind
up into the lemonade sky.
Copyright © Nagham Al-Qahtani | Year Posted 2025
Time waits for no one. Isn’t that great?
If it waited on us, it would end up too late.
We think we’re the master of our time controlled realm,
But Time is the faster man at the helm.
What we witness now is already gone.
When? Where? and How? is the ultimate con.
When we’re young and naïve, we set ourselves up,
For we often believe we can measure the cup.
We sip and we dine never hearing the chime,
Never drawing the line between work and home time.
And what of the child we lose to the hours
Of days and months filed in Time’s secret towers?
We wake to each day. Isn’t it great?
And know we rely on Time’s ceaseless wake.
Take nothing for granted. Time is the king.
It’s what poets have ranted and what we all sing.
Life is for living. Don’t worry about time.
Ask what you’re giving. Hand someone a dime.
Keep hold of your dreams and be sure that you share.
Send loved ones some moonbeams, safe journeys through prayer.
“Time waits for no one” does not have to be
The mantra that traps you, but sets you free.
Copyright © Julianna Bozsik | Year Posted 2025
The thought of you
The thought of you is the salty sea breeze
The thought of you is a fallen flower floating on the ocean’s surface
The thought of you is the ocean, too vast to know everything
The thought of you is world changing, groundbreaking, and too good to be true
The sight of you is an emerald sparkling in the sun
The sight of you is an autumn leaf falling and spiraling to the ground
The sight of you is my universe forming
The sight of you is world changing, groundbreaking, and too good to be true
The presence of you is a sunflower budding
The presence of you is a clear sky on a warm summer day
The presence of you is the stars in the midnight blue sky
The presence of you is world changing, groundbreaking, and too good to be true.
The thought of you, the sight of you, the presence of you is more than words could be.
Copyright © JuliaJewls Jewls | Year Posted 2025
The cragged moon, a curdled, midnight bloom,
Where veins of frost, dissect a shadowed room.
A galaxy of mold, on lunar stone,
A whispered legend, soft and darkly known.
It weeps a brine, a sharp, celestial tear,
A pungent phantom, banishing all fear.
Then, amber relics, in a glassy tomb,
Where time's slow fingers, weave a spiced perfume.
Each wrinkled emerald, a sunken, ancient eye,
That holds the secrets, of a bygone sky.
They swim in brine, a sun-kissed, golden sea,
Where sharpness sleeps, and tangy memories flee.
These kindred spirits, in a twilight tryst,
A marriage strange, by starlight's silver kissed.
One, a moon's decay, a noble, bitter grace,
The other, time's own kiss, upon a verdant space.
A symphony of tang, a whispered, aged lore,
Where phantom flavors, haunt forevermore.
A taste of ages, in a shadowed, secret place,
A paradox of pleasure, etched on time's worn face.
A velvet darkness, and a sunlit, sour dream,
Where sharpened shadows, and aged sunbeams gleam.
Copyright © Robynn Simmons | Year Posted 2025
They do not see me,
only numbers,
a mind wrapped in accolades,
a vessel of knowledge,
but never a soul.
What I do beyond the classroom
is dust in the wind,
unnoticed, unworthy,
a shadow cast by my own intellect.
My mind,
a magnet for praise,
a curse to myself.
neglect my suffering,
worship my GPA.
Scorn my exhaustion,
demand I excel.
Work. Work. Work. Work.
Run faster, push harder,
outshine the one behind,
outdo the one ahead.
Break the cycle.
Be first.
Full ride, perfect score,
rewrite the past in brighter ink.
Don’t be her. Be better.
Don’t compare. But compare.
Lead, but follow.
Stand out, but fit in.
A never-ending tug-of-war,
and when the rope snaps,
I stand alone.
Dangling between purpose and place,
the misplaced piece in a puzzle
that never had a space for me.
In a world of patterns,
I am the outlier, the inconsistency,
the contradiction wrapped in expectation.
My mind—a battlefield,
truth and acceptance at war,
the lines blurred,
the victor unknown.
All I know is that each battle
leaves me emptier
than the last.
Copyright © Summer Grandpre | Year Posted 2025
I was born into a world that does not see me.
My body tells the story of absence;
The hollow of my stomach,
The jagged outline of my ribs,
My fur, patchy and damp.
I learned quickly that to want is to be ignored,
And to ache is to exist.
As a puppy, I thought someone might see me.
I thought if I wagged my tail hard enough,
If I tilted my head just right,
The world might open its hands.
But it did not.
It only ever closed its fists,
Turned its back,
And left me with scraps,
Too spoiled to taste.
Now I roam alleys slick with rain,
My nose pressed against the cold pavement.
The air sharp with the tang of rust,
The faint sweetness of a bruised apple
Rotting in the dark.
Even the light avoids me
Street Lamps flicker,
Shadows curl against my skin,
Like they, too, are ashamed.
I am no monster,
Though that's how the world perceives me.
I am just a dog that takes up too much space,
Whose hunger speaks louder than it ever should.
And yet, I keep searching.
I follow the smell of bread I will never taste,
The sound of footsteps I will never reach.
I chase voices that don't belong to me,
Hoping they might turn and see me,
Hoping they might call for me.
They do not.
So I sit beneath a streetlamp that sputters and hums,
And I imagine what it would feel like,
To have the weight of a hand on my head,
The sound of love spoken softly in the dark,
A belly heavy with food,
The sharp edges of my ribs fading into softness.
I close my eyes and imagine,
And for a moment,
I am full.
Copyright © talia izsak | Year Posted 2025
As always, in the days before you arrive, I fall ill.
A premonitory sign of the melancholy to come.
Some part of me is staging an intervention.
But doubled over, I double down.
I tell myself it will all be worth it,
At least, I say, I will know I'm alive.
I think all this whilst knowing that you're not coming for me,
That you want to talk about her.
I see your pain and listen as generously as I can,
Telling you what I know you need to hear.
This is my penance.
I know this is going to hurt,
That I am breaking my own heart with this compulsion.
I remind myself that even when the heart wants what the heart wants,
When the body finds its primordial other,
The oceanic certainty of love can still feel like death,
And that I destroyed what I loved most just to feel safe.
Sitting this close to you,
My body behaves as she always does - treacherously.
Even though I know by now the price, I don't try to tame the force of her remembering. It's a wager I'm certain to lose -
The die already cast,
A busted flush,
She runs rampage.
It's a death ride now, and I know it,
But I will her on regardless
For a momentary glimpse of the future
Of my illusion.
Copyright © Cm Moe | Year Posted 2025
I am vulnerable, confused, flawed, twisted
I am what I am.
I don’t want to cook,
don’t want to clean.
I don’t want to be
A wife or a mother.
I choose what I will not be.
I can wear a six yard
or a two piece
I can shun style
And chose comfort instead.
I decide to look how I feel.
I may soar, I may burrow,
I may sail smooth
Or dive deep with in
I steer my life as per my wish.
Do not give me names
nor assign roles,
do not set standards
and place me in boxes.
I am not a commodity.
You are not the creator.
We are but children of Nature
Unbound by roles,
Both wild and free.
Let us embrace isness
and create some harmony.
Copyright © Ramya Vishwanath | Year Posted 2025
Hello…
HELLO?
Nothing.
Silence.
The absence of sound.
Shhh…
I command my body to stay still, to obey, to shrink into the silence.
Rigid.
Unmoved.
It might come back—
SNAP!
Screeches from the winged night guards above slice through the air.
A sudden rush of wind frantically whispers its secrets to the trees.
The stars and moon blink in my wake, and I cry.
I cry out, but their light does not reply.
Did I even speak?
Did I even call?
Maybe the silence is mine.
I long for a response—an answer—
But at what cost?
What if it finds me?
What if it already has—
What if—
it never left?
No. No, I won’t think about that.
But the silence is shifting, stretching, thickening.
It lingers.
It shifts.
It grows.
It listens.
I can't be trapped here with only myself.
Not when the silence is listening.
Not when it breathes.
I will let the silence take me.
Going.
Going.
Gone.
The echo will not return.
Because the echo never was.
Because I never was
Because—
Copyright © Oreofeoluwa Oshinubi | Year Posted 2025
I feel dissected and mutilated. Strung up on a cross and paraded through endless eyes.
Copyright © Mel Woods | Year Posted 2025
In the watery deep, where she calls home,
She swims with her kind, but she is alone.
They call to her, but she swims away,
Returning to the surface, each night, and day.
Searching for something, she does not understand,
A beautiful creature, that walked on dry land.
She had seen the boat, that fateful day,
Moving fast, upon the waves.
Intrigued, she swam closer, as he set the sail,
How did he move, without a tail.
His hair was dark, his skin was tan,
She followed, til she saw him step out on dry land.
Memorizing every line of his beautiful face,
As her long, red hair, wrapped around her waist.
Breaking the surface, she saw him there,
Standing on deck in the warm sea air.
His eyes seemed to find her, he could not look away,
He had thought her a dream, when he saw her that day.
Entranced by her beauty, he jumped from the ship,
Lured from the melody that flowed from her lips.
She watched him struggle, against the waves,
His lungs filling with water. He must be saved.
Swimming to the shore, she laid him gently on the sand,
She’d never be able to walk on dry land.
A part of her world, he could never be,
Salty tears filled her eyes, as she swam out to sea.
He awoke to the sound of a mournful song,
Like someone in pain, like something was wrong.
A soulful melody echoed from the sea,
A part of her world, he’d never be.
Watching her disappear, beneath the waves,
He suddenly realized, his life she had saved.
No one would believe him, but he didn’t care,
He knew if he called to her, she’d always be there.
He smiled with sadness, as he got to his feet,
Maybe, someday, again they would meet.
In each other’s world, they would never be,
But, in his heart, she was real, the Siren of the Sea.
Copyright © ANGELA ALVEY | Year Posted 2025
We must clear the signs
If visitors come.
The instructions on how to
Wipe and clean.
It is for shame, to not
Embarrass him.
Signs encouraging growth and how to
Self-sustain.
What do they think of
My old cracking bathroom?
If they knew the battles fought here, the messes made!
At least the dog can still be washed here.
So that’s one less mess to leave behind.
Copyright © Olivia Tuohy | Year Posted 2025