POETRY

By: Divya Garg
In the process of liking sad songs and the tragic endings of movies, I never thought we
would become one. I never thought we would call our love story the tale of longing and
yearning. It's a shame for both of us if we aren't separated by death itself but by a thousand
misunderstandings and circumstances seeping into our bond.
The nights we stitched with our jokes and our love still haunt me. Time speaks to me like a
hesitation, and I am afraid we will never find our way back to each other if it goes on like this.
I never knew that the simplest words between us would need a translation, yet we both
failed. We both failed to handle this delicate love in our tender hands.
If the universe could give me the dictionary of you, I would read every syllable and highlight it
with my love. I have learned to read your ghost like a newspaper article — unable to stop
even if I want to. We are the catalogue of our own grief, my love. There's no one to blame
but us and time.
If I had met you at 20, I would have hugged you closer to my chest and never let you go. But
at 15, I will learn to hold the cup of your absence, even if it stings, even if it burns. There was
a time when we were the tide and shore — always together with an inevitable pull and
retreat. I never knew there would be a time when we’d become two ships, lost in the farthest
corners away from each other’s land. I am as far away as you have pushed me, my love.
Do you still remember those nights when we promised each other forever and believed in it
like a superstition? I have still kept it safe as a relic, because neither you nor I know how to
bury it without burning it. I keep thinking about the cruelty of ordinary choices. And if one
wish were granted to me, I would change every action of mine that hurt you. I would change
yesterday so my tomorrow could be different.
A day of cowardice and a simple, unkind word ruined us and moulded our bond into a
fracture of decayed bones. We rerouted two lives with the subtlety of a river changing its
bed. Maybe one day we will set the truth free without armour, and find peace in its plainness
— not hoping for it to be the bridge to connect us.
Until then, I wish you the best without any punctuation or full stop to that sentence. If we
must be parted by everything but death, then let us be parted gently. Let us hold hands for
the last time and go to our favourite place. Let us order coffee and sip it while staring into
each other’s eyes as time passes by. Let the wind answer all our unanswered questions. Let
us not forget the tenderness we shared because of a few bitter days. Let us spare each
other the cruelty of becoming strangers overnight.
And if fate wants to step in as a jealous editor, may the parts that remain between us teach
us how to love better next time — even if the next time never comes.


Author's bio
Divya is a 16-year-old writer who lives in India. For her, writing has always been an escape, through which she explores the intricacies of human emotions and tries to capture them in her writing, bringing them back to life. Her works are previously published in Haven Literary, Epiphany Anthology, The Milagros Literary, Writers Magazine, The Passionate Post, and many other literary magazines. Some anthologies that include her work are Chromatic Currents and Beautiful Chaos. She has been writing original poems since she developed a passion for writing. You can check out her other works on her Instagram handle @diaryofdivi

By: Katie-may fincham

Dear the girl with salt in her lungs,

Things feel miserable. The rot is spreading, lining and coursing through your arteries

like a disease you are certain will never leave. You are alone, and it is the worst thing in

the world because you cannot change it, no matter how hard you try.

You were standing on top of the world when the orbit shifted. You look around, but no

one seems to notice the ocean rising, your lungs filling quietly with water, because for

them life never changed. You watch as if someone else has tilted the globe in their hands

and let you slide off the edge of it.

You will apologise for failing. For struggling. For the world to continue on as if you

were never drowning at all. Years later, you will look back and wish you had stood up -

We will plead with you now to stand up, over the deafening sneers echoing around you.

But I understand why you couldn’t. Why you didn’t. Why you would not dare to.

The rot was paralytic. A dark, heavy blanket smothering every ember, every spark that

once lived in you. What felt like a supernova at its crescendo -that blinding, white-hot

flare- will not, did not, destroy you. It only seared your retinas long enough that the

darkness after felt like home.

The death of one star is never an ending. It is a beginning you are not yet equipped to

witness. The light starting to constellate, because what you think is irreparable damage

is only the shockwave before creation. The light is not as dim as you think. The rot you

fear is only decay making room for something new to take root. The water in your lungs

will evaporate, not from anger, but from a quieter fire you have not met yet.

You will learn that the light you carry is not borrowed from others. It is something you

hold for yourself, and sometimes pass on like a relay of beacons in the dark.

I don’t know if you will ever have perfect peace.

But I know years from now, you will be okay.

Love,

the girl who coughed up the water.   

                                                                                    -katie-may

Author's bio

Katie-may is a Fine Art student who utilizes poetry to provide a psychological and philosophical framework for her visual work. By weaving these mediums together, she explores the nuance of nostalgia and memory.

By: Mira Soriano
Where are my sun-colored glasses?
Tears blur my vision
As I make the—
Move a pillow
And I draw open the curtain—
Just the one, frosted windows remain closed and
Blurrier, blurrier, blurrier—
I can’t see and
I rolled out the yoga mat and
Stare through the above
A corpse in position
Just as I was told to be and
I feel guilty because
Lola just wants to talk
To connect, to care
For me
Me?
But I can not humour her
This
The world
Today
I rip out my tears and I see the imitation sunflowers
I wrapped around the cold metal bars of my bed
And I think of how Vincent
Used to eat yellow paint


Author's
Mira Soriano is an aspiring creative writer and artist based in Mindanao, Philippines. She's probably listening to BTS right now. Or reading. Or both.

By: L. 
I’ve never let anyone claim me as theirs, takes a lot just to make me stare. 
Maybe if you’re pretty, I’ l smile and look your way. 
But the principle of you is hard to erase. 
I want to be your first and last thought right after sleep or just before it. 
To be thought about - often. 
Just don’t tell me, 
Then we’ll both lose sleep. 
Silently, secretly, sweetly 
become a writer 
write about me. 
Stare, don’t tell me anything 
but do something. Show me you care. 
I may tease and provoke, but really I’ll freeze at just a stroke of your hand. 
Love me like a writer. Humbly write me letters but never put my address, let them get lost, leave them around - I’ll know 
I’ l find and read every single one of them. 
Let them age - a day, week, month and so 
Write my name in cursive, make it messy so nobody knows; 
Romanticize me. I won’t call you out on a bluff. 
It’s the only thing I’m willing to accept. 
Secret love letters and nicknames only I would understand. 
Tight hugs and kisses when no one else is left - 
Selfishly, keep me like a lost fragment. 

By: Xaraphine
Her.
To my dearest,
If only you were honest enough to remember the girl you used to be; a vessel completely
and utterly consumed by societal thoughts. You were enclosed within a tight shell. So
nervous to tell others how she felt or should be feeling, with palms that surfaced beads of
sweat, and with gulps that encroached your throat, edging louder with every breath. If
only you stopped trapping every emotion inside the guise of your body. If only you
unveiled that ennui around the emblem of your chest. You never acknowledged her or
saw her, and yet you still don't. All that came next was age; and with age comes
eroticism. You started creating art, poetry, and stories, but this was mired in what others
expected you to create, which encapsulated the erotic. This is what helps us humans
reconcile with the blasphemy of creation; to see everything through a voyeuristic lens.
You became so depraved that you ignored her, and you ignored your creator. You became
distanced from who you were, and the Divine who helped you to see who you are. You
knew who you wanted to be, and adapted to the outward version of who you envisioned
to see. Yet inside, you still stood as the young, trembling girl, so desperate to be
eroticised, but detesting even an eye lingering on her body. And so you understood,
brought back to the fear and shame that comes from feminine youth. You remembered all.
those you had been compared to, and all those you compared yourself to. You weren't as
bright as them, not as pretty, not as motivated or charming, and not as witty. All that you
became was what you wanted others to see you for, but how truly, did you see yourself?
As an oppressor, to that young child that desperately wanted to be heard. The girl who
saw and heard things that didn't make sense to her when she was young, but clicked so
pristinely, when she came of age. You never allowed her to escape the shell, but
entrapped her further, in a façade of what others wanted to see. But you never achieved
satisfaction, you were never good enough for the Eurocentrics. Deep down, deeper than
the soul, you knew why you felt like an outsider, when you emblematised everything you
sought to encapsulate.
So, I apologise.
Yours truly,
Your dearest.


Author's Bio
Xaraphine is a 19 year-old writer fascinated by aspects of girlhood, post-colonial theory, orientalism, cinema and pop culture. Frequently writes on Substack, where the above themes are dissected in a semiotic way, conveying cultural, nuanced interpretations.

By: V Sarmiento
I'm not looking for forever love.
I'm chasing that thrilling rush.
I don't want a sappy, gushy romance,
I want a rivalry that burns my skin,
leaving me bloodied and bruised.
I want something alive.
 
I want something electrifying, something exciting.
Something that' l keep me up at night.
Something so thrilling it shocks me straight to the core. 
 
I want us to dance the masochism tango.
Do not be afraid to break me. 
 
I was not made to be soft, I do not whisper and sigh.
I insult, curse, bicker and ye l over your enticing voice. 
 
I want to be trenched in your sweat, blood and tears. I want the same for you.
I want your fist on my jaw and my knee on your stomach 
I want to run bloodied fingers through your perfect hair, 
puling at strands as I press your face against the floor with a ragged breath. 
 
I’ l never be your perfect girl, I’m a lovesick, violent fag. 
I don't know which way you swing, I’m left in the dark.
Figuring you out drives me goddamn insane. 
I do not want to be let down, I want this to mean something. 
I want to mean something more to you. 
 
So hit me again, don't hold back.
I want this to hurt, I want this to leave a mark. 
I will never dare to be soft, I am not made to love.
Silence this disgusting want,
Make me bleed.
 
Just once more.


Author's bio


A senior on track to study psychology or graphic design, V is your local artist of all kinds of mediums and a writer. They enjoy hanging out with friends, swimming, biking, playing basketball and checking out local events!

Author: Chainka

let’s go back to your old house for Christmas Eve

i wanna see how the lights in your room surrender to grief

and then quietly die when you tell them to leave

we could lay on your little childhood’s bed

tell what we always wanted to, and then not remember a thing that we’ve said

you’ve got a way of reciting, it makes me so sad

every time when you speak of your dad

and i want to tell you i’m sorry, but then, i’ve never had

i’ve never had

let’s go back to your house in George’s Hill

i wanna learn where you learnt to punish and kill

they promise a lot of snow there this year, i could make angels and snowmen

and you could shoot them

until we both would feel empty

baby, i wanna know who taught you how to ruin gently

who taught you how to ruin gently?

i wanna go

(i wanna go)

to places

(to places)

to your favorite store

and i, i wanna leave a couple of traces (traces)

to mask (to heal) your scars

tell me your favorite places, where they are?

i wanna know

(i wanna know)

everything that you hide

(if you wish to be mine)

all of the corners of your beautiful soul

and your brilliant mind

there’s some kind of magic that i don’t seem to get

why does it feel like i know you if we’ve never met?

why does it feel like i know you if we’ve never met?

drive me around the block

you get so upset back at home we don’t ever talk

watching the sun disappear in the fog

your mom’s preparing turkey, you want to play the wishbone

won’t tell it for now, but you gotta know

i’d already given you the longer ending

baby,

who taught you how to ruin gently?

who taught you how to ruin gently?

had a contest, counted how many times a day

we would say

“i love you”,

you got two and i got twenty

baby,

who taught you how to ruin gently?

who taught you how to ruin gently?

huh?

trying to heal you

i am trying to heal you, still

i know i never will

the air is thick, naked and intense

told you George’s Hill is like Prague and you said “you’re always looking for the reference”

you’re always looking for the reference

huh

huh

let’s go back to your old house

(let’s go back to your old house)

i want to read through every your diary entry

don’t know who taught you,

but baby,

you taught me how to ruin gently

you taught me how to ruin gently

promised me we would go back to George’s Hill

but we never will

i know better, we never will

i know better, we never will

i know better, we never will

About the poet:

Chainka is a Ukrainian writer and poet whose work traces the fault lines of human emotion—where tenderness meets devastation, and survival learns to speak in metaphors. Writing since childhood, she has developed a voice marked by emotional precision, lyrical intensity, and an unflinching gaze into sadness, longing, and resilience.

Displaced by war in 2022, Chainka turned writing into both refuge and resistance. Her poetry and prose navigate the fragile intersections of war and peace, love and loss, faith and fracture. Through intimate, often haunting imagery, she explores what it means to remain human when the world insists on breaking you.

Author: Vivianne Martinez

Courage didn’t come as I expected. It wasn’t a war cry, not a cinematic moment where epic music marks the exact instant you become brave. It came in a whisper, at three in the morning, when I finally dared to write the words I’d been holding back for years: I can’t keep pretending this makes me happy anymore.

Courage, I discovered, is not the absence of fear. It’s making the phone call even when your hands are shaking. That is, not when your entire life has been trained to say “yes.” It’s getting out of bed on those days when the weight of existence feels unbearable, and yet still putting on your shoes, walking out the door, and carrying on.

My greatest act of courage was letting go of someone I loved, but who was slowly destroying me. Everyone expected me to stay, to try one more time, to be patient because “true love requires sacrifice.” But no one told me that sacrifice shouldn’t include sacrificing your own sanity. That you can love someone deeply and still need to save yourself from them.

The night I left, with two suitcases and my heartbreaking with every step, someone asked me if I was sure. “No,” I admitted. “But I’m going to do it anyway.” That’s courage: moving forward even when certainty doesn’t exist, when the path is dark, and you don’t know if there’s solid ground beneath your next step.

Now I live in a small apartment that smells of coffee and freedom. I sleep alone and sometimes wake up crying, but I also wake up without the knot in my stomach that had become so familiar I’d forgotten it wasn’t normal to live like that. Courage didn’t make me stronger overnight. It made me more honest.

I’ve learned that there’s courage in the mundane: in asking for help when you need it, in admitting you’re not okay, in starting therapy, even if it means unpacking traumas you’ve kept boxed up for decades. Looking in the mirror and recognizing that the person staring back at you deserves more than what you’ve been accepting.

Courage is daring to rewrite the narrative that others wrote about your life. That is, saying “this isn’t me” and beginning the painful work of discovering who you really are beneath all the expectations and masks.

My echoes of courage are small: emails I send, even if it takes me three days to write them; difficult conversations I finally have; boundaries I set and maintain, even when I’m called selfish. They are the scars I bear from battles no one saw because they were fought in the silence of my own mind.

If someone asked me now, “What is courage?” I would say this: it’s the tremor in your voice when you speak your truth anyway. It’s choosing yourself when the world has taught you to choose everyone else first.

It’s whispering “I have courage” until you finally believe it.

Additional information 

This piece speaks of a very personal moment of a close friend of mine that went through a difficult moment. Her story inspired me to write this text.

Author: Bella Melardi

"If your left eye causes you to sin, tear it out." I stared too long into the sun, my eye burning under its weight. It started to melt, to slip from my control. The doctors called it Coat’s disease, a name that sounds less like a diagnosis and more repentance. Sometimes, I wonder if I did something terrible in another life, and this. this slow fading. Was the punishment for my past mistakes.

Close your right eye. A mantra I’ve known since I was young. It’s what the doctors said, what the classmates said, once they discovered that I couldn't see from it. I shut my good eye obediently.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" People would ask. Darkness dressed in silence. A black hole oozing absence. Antimatter etched into vision.

"I can’t see," I tell them, but they insist on testing me anyway. Then, with the smallest movement, I open my good eye. A middle finger stares back at me. 

A lighthouse. Jarring jagged and scarring. A red bleeding beacon. A warning written in flesh. And I am the storm it condemns, the water that refuses calm. 

I laugh and say it’s funny. But that doesn’t make this feeling go away. A fertile gnawing fatigue. My throat the soil, my yawns blossoming from my tongue. I wonder if I’m as broken as they make me out to be. 

Author: Bella Melardi

I blame a lot on my dad. From his drinking to his absence. I hate the way he still haunts me through old, misshapen wounds—scars that itch and burn at the slightest touch. What makes it harder is that my relationship with him wasn’t entirely bad. When I was sixteen, after a brutal fight with my mom, I called him in desperation, and he told me to come over.

On the ride to his place, I stared out the window at a sky patterned with hypertrophic scars. Its flesh was streaked with stains the colour of Fireball shots, as if the sharpness of the city’s light had sliced it open. Behind the fleshy clouds, red tissue ran deep. The trees along the road looked balding and frail, elderly silhouettes reaching for something they had already lost.

When I finally arrived, I broke down. My dad said it hurt him to see me like that. Then he ushered me into his car, cranked Metallica through the speakers, and told me to scream. So I screamed. I hate admitting that it felt freeing. Noise surrounded me inside and out. Noise swallowed me like the mouth of a whale that held me between its baleen plates. 

That’s how memories with my dad always taste: like Fireball shots. Sweet at first, burning all the way down. So yes, I blame him. I hate the way he lingers in me. But what I blame him for most is moving away and starting a new family. How could he give me kindness and support until he decided I wasn’t enough? Even if that kindness was tangled with mistreatment, I can’t pretend it wasn’t there.

Sometimes I think my skin is angry with him, too. It speaks in shades of red. My rosacea feels like a manifestation of buried rage. Red like marinara. Rose buds blossoming from my chin. A red wine nose. Spotting and rotting. Why is it so nuanced? My voice feels trapped behind an abyss of scar tissue. To speak, I have to quiet the wounds, but they always scream louder than I ever can.

I drink. I smoke. And I look in the mirror and ask myself. If this cyclical pattern of substance abuse reminds me of someone else. Then I close my eyes and try to forget.

Poet: Hallie Kunen

We Palestinians say we can find hope in the breeze—

but these days it just rains

I throng to the tent for respite,

but there’s debris in every freshet

bodies, corpses, and rotting flesh

blood streaked on every cloth extant.

I don’t want to die by bombs

a violent skewer ramming every contour

every limb concassed into a deform

guess it doesn’t matter either way if I’m beneath the floor

so take me out by fire

watch me burn alive

transuding gas chambers into an oasis

rendering the Nazis winners with a Holocaust makeshift

Israel has colonized the whole world, except us,

but when it comes to who will feel the embers of karma, conflagrating to consume,

you’re next up.

Additional information 

“‘Iisrayiyl Yahm Alhisab” means “judgment day of Israel” in Arabic.

My objective with this poem was to capture to the reader what it is like to be a displaced Palestinian refugee (both emotionally, and also to be constantly suffering under threat.)

I have also noticed over the past 2 years of my staying in touch with Palestinians and reading their writing/work, how very poetic and articulate they are (in addition to strong and resilient,) and I tried to capture that in this poem. Of course they are courageous too, in addition to a multitude of other positive qualities.

Author bio:

Hallie Kunen started writing poetry in her teens, as an outlet to process her thoughts on this complicated world. She took a break in early college, and then was inspired to write again after joining Stain’d Arts, a nonprofit in Denver, CO, that lifts marginalized voices. This inspired her to continue to write on both political (aka *humanity) matters and also her personal life. She currently lives in NYC.

Author: Hallie Kunen

I throw my white sheet over my bed

like laying on a wedding dress

on the daughter I never had.

I wake up in a pool of blood

not knowing if it’s my period or I’m bleeding to death

in front of a bunch of IDF soldiers

whistling screams, wailing punctures in the sacred alcoves

muzzles on scraped *qibla walls

guffaws about my underwear

sizing me up and the other girls

we are merely comics, sources of laughter for them

can be throbbed to the wall as easily as a bullet

can explode like a bomb and give the soldiers extra thromb

an additional flow of prolactin

they thought Nazis were ill

and *they pretend they’re devoid of guile

but they transmute the Nazis to angels

and will briskly replace them to

be devoured by venal brushfires

for even the earth cannot bolster their festered limbs

My sheet is no longer white

but I know once I give to life

there will be a slip of shroud trailing in lace up above,

I can inhabit and deem as my own.

Additional information 

“Qibla” is the direction of the Kaaba (the sacred building at Mecca,) to

which Muslims turn at prayer.

This poem was inspired by incidents I read about the IDF committing sexual abuse, which are abhorrently (disgustingly) common. In addition to raping and assaulting women, the IDF limit the number of feminine products that are in Palestine/the Gaza Strip, and they increased this post-10/7. In addition IDF soldiers have demanded women hostages (women they hold in their prisons) strip down to their underwear and they mock them, including while they are on their periods.

Reading about this latter egregious act is what inspired me to write this poem.

The woman protagonist of this poem is courageous, and I am courageous for writing this poem and putting it up for publication.

Author bio:

Hallie Kunen started writing poetry in her teens, as an outlet to process her thoughts on this complicated world. She took a break in early college, and then was inspired to write again after joining Stain’d Arts, a nonprofit in Denver, CO, that lifts marginalized voices. This inspired her to continue to write on both political (aka *humanity matters) and also her personal life. She currently lives in NYC.