Beyond

I know it's probably just anxiety But this feels like Il need a chiropractor To snap my body back into place Or break them all so it feels the same

Sure it hurts But there's nothing to show It's all over a half hour later And I smile into the mirror, seeing perfect normalcy

Nowhere to go, nothing to say The clocks keep ticking and tocking I don't know how else to say I feel like a dead man walking

what is it about falling snow that brings so much nostalgia as waves of sky roll over the ocean to jump on silver pebbles and land on the moon’s skin

what is it about your voice that makes conch shells sing a song of farewell to lost time a song so quiet that water becomes sand

what is it about freedom that makes love swim through the veins of a trickling stream that flows down the faces of a broken stage

and what is it about tragedy that steers a shipwrecked heart towards a siren’s call beneath speckled white skies that do nothing at all

By Ann Ping

Gone and Finished

By Syed Wahib Mohammed Rizvi

What level have we fallen to? Where to even say something, away we are shooed The voice of justice only remains in a few The rest are companions in the evil that society brews The period of thought, to express has been bid adieu Paper with Lincoln is all what humans want to pursue Remain silent in front of injustice and dont speak the truth Is this what society has fallen to, like a tamed mule Those who are quiet in front of oppression, do you think you are shrewd? The attitude must change or days remain less when society is doomed One may say why so bitter is your view As what I have described is very well true The world has been held by the power of the few The change of this begins in the change of you

Skeleton

By Abigail Scott

there’s not much left of me anymore. i’m just a collection of memories, now: dusty remnants of softness and life. little more than an unflagging grin, all teeth; a few leathery sinews; the whispery sound of the wind, whistling through the spaces between my ribs.

i’m wind-chime bones and empty eye sockets.

because i’ve been walking for longer than i can remember. my heels are burnished smooth from the endless sand-rock-gravel i shuffle over, ground down by the slow wear of time. i don’t know why i started on this journey, but i don’t think it was for the right reasons, and i can’t stop now. i’m in too deep.

i’d like to slow down, though. if i can. (i hope i can.) these old bones are tired. because, well— who knows? maybe if i’m lucky

something will come home to roost in my ribcage. build a nest. raise some tiny, peeping beginnings in the shelter i provide. yes. i can ease my gait. i can be solid. i can protect a scrap of innocence or two.

my story ended long ago. all of that is over. but…

i suppose i can still be good for something after all.

SNAPSSNAPSSNAPS ||| 171717