documentation

I was waiting for dawn’ s stately tresses at the intersection,

For I hail from another time, trapped in its steady undulation

And oh was I waiting!

My feet were sore, my blisters festering,

Night was not day, day was not yet dark,

Yet I have to leave my mark.

I had come from another place,

A dream by a child's sweet lips identified a myth

“Tis divinity! A nymph, a fairy, a god! ” She exclaimed.

A heinous sprite- two faced, a damnation common to us all

Or perhaps a fiend professing truth? What truth betrays the definition?

“Tis beauty in misty eyes and smiling mouth! ”

Insatiable hunger, oh tyrant in peacetime, all for despairing hope

Is evading the truth, this cowardice, tempest worth?

Or is Death himself, devil crying mercy, with the promise of salvation worth?

Dare to hope or hope to dream?

Lady of the night, oh envious, cunning moon

Lend your gloved hand who stole velvet from the king of Chaos

And starlight for the silk caressing skin

The hand that brought broken dreams

And hated remembrance and brassy love

And lifeless eyes-

Give me the gilded key

And let in the glorious sun

For I see her tresses at the intersection

At the intersection between night and day

And old and new.

— undulation, by jacqueline

i keep trying to find life

in my copper pocket change

and the way it rubs together like

red summer thighs in my wallet.

but i'm scared to touch it

and i'm scared to go outside.

what i am supposed to do

with something that i cannot see?

sister tells me i'm okay,

i'm nineteen and i still have that

invincible-teenage-tornado-aura.

my brother rubs his grimy hands on my shirt.

i've never loathed a touch as much as i did then.

i keep trying to live, because that is

all i know how to do

(i thought i knew how to die, but

not in this way, not in this uncontrolled-by-me way).

with almond eye pits and cans upon cans

of black beans, in the boarded-up windows

of my parent's home, i try to convince myself

that i see a life form, any flickering movement

besides my pulsing eyes.

i wish so badly i believed god had a plan.

i wish so badly my every swallow

didn't scrape my throat.

i wish something would move.

the roads are desolate

(perhaps the apocalypse has come)

ghost town in my city, in my head, in my heart.

maybe it's just the start?

the beginning of the end

the plotters and stocker-uppers

will be laughing when i'm dead.

i cannot sleep. there is a sorry looming nothing

in the newscasts and lone hours.

the nothing.

the suffocating nothing

the static nothing

the sterile nothing

pandemic & nothing & death

& nothing & isolation & nothing.

sickness is spreading

in the chaos of people.

we don't know anything,

i don't know anything. but

my love keeps growing:

in this decay of the world

i have found the growth of it. love.

something in my heart. love.

everything. love.

perhaps life is found here too

— something in my heart, by paige

The sunlight-thin leaf is battered

Against the window by a little storm.

The glass does not announce itself

But through its rigidity.

The small and valiant life

Pliably drums its syncopated rhythm.

— opposition, by mila

march peels back her gums like a

grapefruit, saying babygirl wouldn't you like a hit

& i'm angling so neon it's a matter of

time before you're all hitting play on the

fallout. i corduroy myself open—

unloved unloved unloved. tell me

i'm pretty or don't kill me

at all. & i'll never be

homecoming queen but i do know how to

escape this cannibal city, this

sea of IVs. the city lights up its bones with

aqua, with chemical headlights.

seoul going by too fast & then

tenderly slow. had a dream i buzzed my hair

at four different gas stations the moon still

infected with the softest clench of heart

-muscle. i sleep & i refuse to sleep. i think i

haven't been awake in days. missed two

physics classes because i couldn't

bear to think about the law of

conservation of mass: if i was good in the

past i must be good now & yet here i am,

radioactive in a public bathroom against the

nitrogen sinks. all i wanna know is

where other people put

their bodies & why.

— equinox rising,

by eunice