I’ll eat chocolate for breakfast
and smoke a cigarette for lunch
I’ll wear pajamas all day
and mascara all night
I’ll swipe left and right
and kiss indiscriminately
I’ll bring home an unmemorable date
and kick him out before coffee
I’ll be the person you fell for
and I’ll be single.
A place, where the sunlight
isn’t allowed to go,
and where the starlight
falls to ground, swimming
through endless dreams,
taking refuge to shadows …
A place, forbidden to the sun,
protects those unborn, unseen,
neglected and hidden.
The most beautiful flowers
bloom under the midnight sky …
The most unique blossoms
in the land of twilight …
By Katherine A Toppin
I remember the moment I stopped loving him,
distressed the instant my heart broke.
Walls rose, protected me much like the ones he built around his ex.
My heart had enough as he desperately explained her in his life.
Bowed head in defeat knowing what he did not know.
Sad eyes unable to see our worth. You cannot hold us both.
“How can I pick our friends for you? I cannot demand you make a choice.”
In my heart, there should be none to make, if you love me.
An ex I became but not the same.
By Nelly Black
You figured me out, but you didn’t keep me close. My quirks, my wants, my wishes. All the appropriate high fives and “want to get some tacos?” to the moments of grand gestures.
And you found the door with all the secrets, but didn’t want to step inside.
Or maybe I kept it locked, knowing that someday you would leave, like they always do.
So now that part of me will still float in your head, the “what ifs” and “could haves” and “well, maybes …” will linger.
And then there’s me. Stuck here, wondering the same things too.
By Barry Basden
An odd thing happened last Saturday. You somehow called my cell. Good that Tess was out shopping. I’ve been lucky that way. I don’t know why you still have me in your phone, though I’m glad you do. I kept saying hello? hello? but all I got back was vague noise.
There seemed to be several people in the room, so I listened awhile. Then I heard you ask Paul what he wanted for lunch. I kept listening because it was really nice to hear your voice again.
When I finally hung up, I didn’t say goodbye this time either.
He scrolled down.
His cousin smiled sweetly as she posed with her current beau for homecoming.
He scrolled down.
His former roommate had finally proposed to his girlfriend of three years somewhere out in the middle of the Tennessee woods.
He scrolled down.
His former friend celebrated the coming birth of his first child, posting a video of the baby shower held recently.
He scrolled down.
His former girlfriend got the new job she always wanted.
He gulped down the rest of the whiskey in his glass as the night’s shadows lengthened.
He scrolled down.
“We’re here for only a short while,” Amy said out loud, sketch pad on lap, pencil poised over blank page. “Then it’s back to the spider.”
Her breath, a frosty, cloudy haze, emitted percussively as she spoke. “But as far as I know,” she continued with added emphasis, pencil dancing across her sketch pad, “spiders don’t write poetry.”
When she was finished, she looked down at what she had drawn, then back to its source, satisfied. Above her, the sun was young, far below its apex in the sky.
“Maybe they don’t need words,” she mused. “Not like we do.”
