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My skin doesn’t fitover all of me spilling out, slipping outmind over mouth, soul an ocean emerging in wavespouring from my eyes. I try containing ita sieve to hold back the sea. So instead I try to bottle it,this facsimile of a face we falsely see as identity.I am all the labels fluid or at…
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The mirror judged in silenceher eye seeing all of mein her glass painasking without speakingas to why I stood beforeher, masked and hiddenfrom her gaze. I tried to tell herit was necessary,but necessary for who?I tried to answerit kept me safebut she knew,I was as mucha danger to meas anyone elseso it was a lie…
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I waved to you across the country air over fields, hills, and brick buildings, dotted line borders not yet a quarter millennia in the making. I waved to you in mistyped messages, info dumpjoy of a moment neatly folded into the confines of our days, like packing for a daytrip in our minds. I waved…
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I fall to the riverlike stone sinking into the embraceof shadow. Light surroundsand eyes open to awemesmerizing me, mesmerizing the allI feel enveloped by. There are other stones herea riverbed of souls awakeningslowly eroding to become the lightof the river, the light of the all.Gold are the waters of consciousnesseven with my eyes shut it…
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It’s the waiting that kills you. We should be thankful.This time they caught it early,as if a life sentence hasany other way of running out. We should be thankfulthat she fell in the showerthe crack of sudden vision loss in the steam,keep the chipped tile as a good luck charmsince they found the tumor again…
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When night falls, so does his mind.The walls open like stage curtainsto play a retinue of decades past.The day he skinned his kneeplaying baseball with his friends.The first time he heard her voiceon the operator line directing his call.The day they first met, her arrivingearly to the park with a friendstanding further away to scout…
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The static of his mindblew apart the EKG machine. I don’t know what languagefreedom, will be written in on his hospital release papers,or if they will ever be inked again. He was bouncing off the walls today,slamming pads, brick, doorways, and glass. Demons were in his bones, he saidhe was just trying to shake them…
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Old t-shirts in the closetholiday decorations in the attic.The only once used, then forgotten,waffle iron and matching crock potnext to the glassware collection. The smile in the photograph but not really a smile.More a wry chucklebehind the sunglasses without a sound. The echo of their voices is in the walls of the house,not quite real,…
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Feed uswith AI slopand pink slime. Season us with America first rhetoric,ignore whispers of war crimes. Wash it down with dye-free soda popor gluten-free beer. Placate us with half redacted truths,never mind the fear. Broil us in another unwinnable war. Pacify outragewith Patriot Gamesso we never know the score. Add sexism, racism, ageism, ableism, and…
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The mountain changes with every breath the trees take from the heavens surrounding them. In one season a sigh as children run beneath her branches, build lean to’s and cross her streams looking for frogs. Her moss beds the dreams of a future, they can only hope to reach. In another season the breath becomes…