Liora sat cross-legged in one of those uncomfortable vinyl chairs in the waiting room, flipping through an old magazine she had grabbed from the rack. The headline screamed *“Top 10 Most Bizarre Celebrity Baby Names of 2024!”* She rolled her eyes but started reading it anyway. Tymothe, slouched next to her with his foot propped up—still in that walking boot—was scrolling aimlessly on his phone.

“You’ve got to hear this,” Liora said, not looking up from the magazine. “So apparently, some celebrity just named their kid *Zamboni Zeppelin*.”

Tymothe snorted, still looking at his phone. “Wait, like the ice machine? That’s... wow. Kid’s either destined to be a hockey legend or a heavy metal frontman.”

Liora giggled, flipping the page. “Oh, and it gets worse. Listen to this one: *Epoxy Almond*. What the hell is that? A snack or an adhesive?”

“Sounds like something you’d order at a vegan café,” Tymothe muttered, finally looking over. “I’ll have the gluten-free granola with a side of Epoxy Almond, please.”

She rolled her eyes, grinning. “Seriously, these people act like naming a kid is an avant-garde art project. Like, what happened to just naming your kid something normal? There’s nothing wrong with a good ol’ *Kate* or *Mike*.”

“Yeah, but how could they ever be the center of attention at yoga class with a name like *Kate*? You’ve gotta spice it up, make sure the world knows you’re too cool for basic vowels.” Tymothe stretched his arms over his head, clearly enjoying the ridiculousness of it all. “And the parents think they’re doing something groundbreaking, when really, they’re just dooming the kid to a lifetime of therapy.”

Liora chuckled. “For real. Imagine going through middle school as *Banjo Spatula* or *Moonbeam Harvest*. You’d never recover.”

Before Tymothe could respond, the receptionist called out, “Liora Throckmorton?”

Liora sighed, rolling her eyes again. “That’s me,” she muttered, standing up slowly. She shot Tymothe a look. “God, I hate hearing my last name in public. It sounds like I should be hosting tea parties for people with monocles.”

Tymothe grinned, watching her shuffle toward the desk. “Just lean into it. I’ll start calling you *Lady Throckmorton*, and we’ll get you a fancy cane.”

When she returned, they shared a quick glance, Liora settling back down beside him. “I mean, come on. Throckmorton? Who did my ancestors have to piss off to get that?”

Tymothe chuckled. “It does sound like you should be knighted or something. Sir Liora of the Throckmortons, Guardian of... overpriced antiquities?”

Liora groaned, resting her head in her hands. “You know, it’s bad enough dealing with all the doctor stuff. I don’t need to sound like I’m straight out of a Dickens novel while doing it.”

Tymothe shrugged. “At least it’s memorable. No one’s gonna forget a Throckmorton anytime soon.”

“And you,” Liora shot back, eyes glinting mischievously. “You can’t exactly talk. Tymothe? Really? With a ‘y’? That’s like a hipster knight who only drinks cold brew and solves crimes in his spare time.”

Tymothe laughed. “Oh, trust me, I’ve been having an identity crisis about that ‘y’ since high school. I thought it made me look cool and sophisticated.”

“Yeah, real sophisticated,” Liora teased. “You sound like you belong in a bad indie movie. Like the tortured lead character who writes poetry about abandoned warehouses.”

“And Throckmorton is somehow better?” Tymothe shot back. “Sounds like your ancestors ran a tiny, haunted village where all the kids disappeared.”

Liora cracked up, clutching her stomach. “Honestly, it fits. Maybe I’ll start introducing myself as *Liora, Mistress of Throckmorton Manor*. You know, the one where the lights flicker and the butler’s been missing for 15 years.”

Tymothe chuckled, shaking his head. “Great. Meanwhile, I’m stuck with Tymothe, the coffee shop philosopher with more opinions than sense.”

They both laughed harder than they probably should have for a waiting room, but neither cared. It felt good to be loud, to be ridiculous, in a place that always seemed too quiet and too serious.

After catching her breath, Liora wiped her eyes. “We’ve really hit the jackpot, huh? Throckmorton and Tymothe. Two names that sound like we belong in some twisted Victorian mystery novel.”

Tymothe nodded sagely. “Or a band. Definitely a band. *Throckmorton & Tymothe*, playing all your favorite obscure tunes no one’s heard of.”

Liora smirked. “First hit single? *Zamboni Zeppelin*.”

“And the B-side,” Tymothe added, “*Epoxy Almond*.”

They both burst out laughing again, drawing curious looks from the other people in the waiting room. Liora grinned, feeling lighter than she had in weeks.

“Throckmorton and Tymothe,” she said softly, leaning back in her seat. “We’d be unstoppable.”

“Damn right,” Tymothe replied with a wink. “But first, we conquer this waiting room.”

They settled into a comfortable silence, still grinning like a pair of mischievous kids who’d just pulled off the best prank ever.

The wind

the rain

the sun

Are my teachers.

I walk among the ageless cedar

Observing the way of the beaver.

The galaxies and stars

Are my fathers’ map

guided by along

The less traveled, seldom trodden

Path.

I discern an ancient tale of woes spoken in the cryptic caws of crows

Who witness a world of

Ever change

Never less

the same

The grasping

Nevermore

to gain

Rising, collapsing.

The dawn of days

first born Hills rejoicing

Mountains leaping toward the sky

Came the vain pursuit of man

To find his means to satisfy

His bulging and corrupted-

Covetous eye.

I’ve seen the tower, babel

Thrust toward heaven high

Collapse

Returning to a mound of futile efforts dashed

laden beneath Millennias

of strata

and ash.

i owe you myself

you buffed up teddy who lived for all

today when i remember you

to be honest i dont think i am anymore

it took years to be here

it will take years to be where you were

but trust me even if i defied and defied and defied

i did so because i didnt know who i was

now i know

i am you and i will always be you

and now i must also walk on salt

in these tiresome shoes and the wisdom of dormancy-

felines and plundered dreams -

all surround the elixir of forgotten and tomorrow some

fortitudes in musky waters -

sanguine little bird whirling

around lesions silled in

red bricks

standing in oblivion

to krakatoa and orlando

exits and brexits

bullets and rowdy

orbits that sanity cuttles upon

The aeroplane flies away

And carves a bladed frame

Through hypnotic dead air,

Exiled from gravity’s bullying horrors.

Mood ring satellites

Nip deep at moon marrow fingers

And empties its milked ore overload,

To blind the wistful eye

Of an evaporating sun.

The unmoored aeroplane skirts the ebony rim

And punctures paper mâché lungs,

Exhaling death rattle transmissions

In 7/8 time.

Captain Zero kindly requests

That you forward any universal quandaries

To Violeta Of The Soul Sucked Skies,

Where her cosmos crowned saplings

Eat up an afterbirth of stars,

A million miles high.

The aeroplane salutes God

Then dips down

And bleeds a mercury tail,

As delirium casts radar shackled magnet eyes

Through television snow,

And the pull of below is a disintegrating ballet for the ages.

watering ivy grown on an abandoned ferriswheel in neverland

she remembered the eye of the sahara

there was no correlation between the two

but then was there a correlation between anything

walking away from ivy - she stalled her feet in quicksand

she dipped deeper and deeper till she looked down

she found that her feet werent in quicksand but quicksand was in her feet

she mustered courage and tried to find her feet

courage devoid of fate loomed to be nothing

it was the site of an approaching quicksand seagull that rushed her feet up

that seagull was her courage- quicksand her fate

life reversed these analogies to cast her anew

she walked with her thighs covered in wet gluey mud

that green ferriswheel zooming large

all of a sudden she saw kittens sucking onto their dead mother

her son had died leaving her mammary glands painfully milky

those kittens then sucked onto her

analogies reversed again

night had fallen anew

there was nothing in sight other than reflection of a single star on quicksand

she found hope in quicksand

changed her direction after having fed the kittens

her nipples didnt pain anymore

her feet no more in quicksand

she sat by the bay of quicksand and prayed to that single star

she prayed for the quicksand to turn into a lake for her to reach a shore

she slept over it

she woke up to see a shore

the mother cat was sleeping on her belly

she took a boat to the shore and rowed it with the mother cat and her kittens

they reached home to a red sky at a place called zanzibar where they lived happily ever after

star-splashed at what at happened she asked a local where they were

she kept asking but noone replied

there were rivers of liquor devoid of hangover at this place

there were rivers of honey

date palms here and there

and no-one talked but only took a sigh of relief

this really was zanzibar-

I asked him why he felt

The sickly sweet threat of death

Offered reward beyond risk,

To steward his bones

And shepherd his flesh

Into a sermon of silent fire.

And he answered me

Through heavenward fits of raging plume

That watered eyes to glassy ruin,

That he was too aware of this hurting world,

With its stale routine of accounted hours

That gave hollow meaning

To the majority who played by the rules,

But beat the dreams

Out of winsome fools.

And he spoke softly

With a crushed snow tone,

As if afraid

To awaken

Phantom limbs

Back to circulation.

He told me tales

Of how God had been painted

In colours of violent strikes upon childhood walls,

Where ambassadors of Christ

Were self pleasing sadists,

Growing fat off piquant tears

From their feast of tortured youth,

For he was not welcomed

At the Great Table

Of the chameleon skinned demigods.

How he cried out traumas that salted the air

With forever scars that dug beneath bone,

As many more wilted flower heartbreaks

Followed after, addressed to him,

Without remorse,

Without return,

Always hot,

Always burned.

I begged his hand away

Where the lone match met the kissing fuse of fate

And said;

“Life’s prisons and sanctuaries

Sit side by side,

And often we leave one for the other

When hope’s flowers have dried,

But up that one way road

Blistered feet

Can touch freewheeling grace,

Near ringlet star majesties

Hovering over streets of gold.”

He looked sweetly

Through my soul,

And with peace bubbling

In his thunderbird blood,

Flew above the pulsing walls

Of duplicitous leaping flame.

Freedom.

Sanctuary.

Eternal.

The rain fell down in dizzy wanderlust

Searching for fire

But finding none,

Retracted her rods of wire and water

Into Electra skies both blue and proud.

imagine a dagger at every step and still offering yourself

you weak jigsaw type fuck i wish you had your flesh ripped apart

for safety that never was you opted for survival

a safe dungeon you dug for yourself

you were never there

you never said that

you never did that

but fate had put you on a cross

they believed folklore passed on at your expense

slander flamed open at your expense

tis pit was yours

what is after crucifiction

rosaries with beads dripping of hebrew and arabic

calling to God to fix it all

fixation is my utopia

reclining on the edges of redemption i was buried today

rosaries are at it to redeem me where the streets failed to

there may be some layered stories of success hereabouts

but jackson still tried to go white -

and utopia has even buried teenage sons