Do you still remember our nights? How we used to walk back home at night, crossing almost the entire city? How, once in a while, we would stop to look at the stars and wonder? Remember how alive, how real we felt during those nights?

Do you still remember how, be it a good or a bad day, we always had each other's back? How you fell into my arms when you felt miserable, and how dearly we embraced each other? How you always supported and believed in me when nobody else did, not even me?

Remember how, during our nights, we danced and laughed in the freedom of the empty streets, feeling free to act however we pleased? In those nights, we were far away from the worries of the day, from the expectations, from the preying eyes filled with prejudice and hate.

Do you still remember those nights? Do you still remember me? Because I do. Because I never went anywhere.

You've moved away and you've moved on, and I can't blame you, really. I guess it's just a part of growing up. But I wish we never did.

Even though you have left and forgotten me, seldom remembering me as a childish make-believe, I have never left or forgotten you. All those years later I'm still here, in the back of your head, waiting to catch you with my arms wide open.

Always cherishing our nights back home,

Kate

Kill these ripe stars blistering into nameless scars

Phantom free fall holograms

Erasing no name memory tapes.

Swan dive slow motion suicide

Phonic treachery and layered silence

Wrapping umbilical cords

’Round the screaming void

Spilling loose traumatic phenomena

Seeded from the brain blanking paralytic.

Shutdown mode

Muttering stutters and slivering recall

Erasing no name memory tapes.

Words are reimagined versions of subconscious truths.

That is all.

She said

Autumn came to die

Upon moorland bedside,

Parting the poppy flanked tide,

Cerise cradled petals

Breathlessly noosed

To the weave webbed tug

Of November’s cryptic movements

Towards a flake salted earth.

October will soon rouse

Her firestorm tragedies

In straddling waves,

The nostril steam and sepia fog

A shrouded processional

From wild horses parading a bolted conquest

Amidst the battering ram of razored rain,

Indenting valleys to an asymmetrical wasteland,

And how viciously soon

Shall stone bone trees

Be powdered and masked

In December’s endless coughs of mists and snow.

These Black Down Hills

Will surrender their thinned shoulders

To the splattering blots

Of doom eyed magpie flocks,

Singing thundering flaps

With winged newspaper spread

Cutting a heavenward arrow

Bounded but dull,

Littering the darkened loom

Tasked to them,

Through jaded skies

Voided of sun,

A blood moon eye

Etherised and sinking past derelict horizon.

I came to England

But left my heart in Dartmoor.

tin foil attire foils

electromagnetic spies

paranoia chic

...

9/4/2024

*author's note:

I try very hard not to use names, usually opting for pronouns only, in the hopes that in that broad generality readers can find something of themselves or their compatriots therein, or better relate on a human level, then they might, if the story were of some particular Harry or Isaabella.

If a name is absolutely essential, I look for something related to the key themes of the story, either by sound or by association.

09/04/2024

Who? challenge @Last

The day I found a moment

That had escaped the flow of time,

I chased it, in wonder and scrutiny.

What I found was a story, a whole life instead.

There was joy, and there was sorrow

And a promise for all of eternity.

And so every passing instant

Makes us laugh, makes us cry.

It's full of certain uncertainty.

The day I found an ounce of self-respect, something that had been lost, sequestered in the junk drawer of my soul, was when I knew it was time to be free from my dependency.

This year I vow to shed my lifelong addiction to Thanksgiving leftovers. I can do it by myself and without a prolonged delay. So, on November 29th, I’m gonna quit…cold turkey.

The day I found a weathered journal in the attic, its cracked leather and yellowed pages revealed a 1923 entry about uncovering a hidden truth. Inside were sketches, symbols, and a faded town map marked with an X beneath the old clock tower. Remembering a childhood story of a secret room there, I felt a strong urge to uncover the long-buried mystery.