Some mornings are darker. 
Rain drenched earth, you smell like my childhood windows
Dirty glass panes laced with 
A million stories, untold.
Shelter me in your innocence.
I am drifting from one thought to another
Effortlessly gliding through the numbness within.
The distant lines of the horizon are blurry in grey
The hush left by speeding cars deafening in my ears
Morning, your gloom shrouds me like 
Life is a terrarium of stillborn dreams.


Author Bio:
Simantini is a voice. An academic by profession, a neuroscientist by training, a writer by choice, and an avid lover of poetry. She writes for herself, and no one else. She writes when she has something to say that can't be said out loud. Themes she likes to explore in her writings are mental health and women and their symbiosis with the world at large. She lives in India and engages in social science and biological science research. She is perpetually at crossroads, and her writing and her poetry let's her resolve her various contradictions, reflect on herself and explore the grey area that is the human mind. 

She is the underdog reaching for her dreams.

She is optimistic with the smile of sunbeams.

She is the story, from beginning to end.

She is loyal and a true, devoted friend.

She is a fighter, her strength is like steel.

She’s forgiving, her heart open and healed.

She’s the poem, full of poise, class and grace.

Her beauty shines through her soul, not just her face.

She is empowering, choosing to uplift others.

She is a lover, a student, a teacher, a mother.

She is purely beautiful, it’s simple to see.

She is her, She is she, She is you, She is me.


Author Bio:
Ashley Virginia Matthew is a graduate of Cedarville University with a degree in Journalism. She currently lives in Fairfield, Ohio and enjoys writing fiction and poetry. Ashley has been writing as a hobby since childhood and enjoys writing on a variety of genres, from fantasy to romance. Her writing is influenced by a vast majority of topics, including sports, personal life events, historical figures and more. 

In her spare time, Ashley also enjoys exercising, watching professional wrestling, blogging and listening to music. Some of Ashley's previous writing experience includes being a staff writer for KayfabeKickout.com, an intern reporter for The Pulse-Journal, a reporter for two collegiate student newspapers and a reporter for her high school student newspaper. Ashley's writing goals include someday being a published novelist and to always strive to improve at her craft for writing. 

​In those days
when my poetry was
young, I splashed
verses on the classroom 
wall, inviting observers 

How was I to know
then what a flood
I would open, how each
blanketed outing, each
puff of cognitive cloud

would try to emerge
as a stanza, link itself
to another word, then
drip down on the screen,

I’m constantly sopping
up words without 
so much as a bib?


Author Bio:
JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. He blogs about books at readingandlitresources.blogspot.com.

​I wore it long
when I was young
that mouse limp brown
that hid my eyes behind its layers.
 
It didn’t offer the luster of other girls’
whose moms allowed chemicals and dyes
But for me shelter was the better treasure.
 
as long as no one knew
that underneath its finer strands
a nest of bramble
a tangled weave
an abandoned web would hide.
 
My sister found it once,
lifted its length to reveal the
the snarly mesh,
yelled for Mom
who couldn’t hide her horror.
 
It wasn’t the hour of tugs and tears
the snagging pulls, the dull ache
of sitting still
the clumps of dust and hair
that swept across the table
like a Midwestern storm in June.
 
It was my bruised pride
my hidden carelessness
that shunned untangling,
wilting quickly when exposed to light.


Author Bio:
Julianne Palumbo is a mother, a writer, and a writing encourager. As a shy young girl, poetry is where she first found her voice. She has published poems, short stories, and essays, and continues to dream about publication of her YA novels-in-verse. She is the author of Into Your Light (Flutter Press, 2013) and Announcing the Thaw (Finishing Line Press, 2014), poetry chapbooks about raising teenagers. She is the Founder/Editor of Mothers Always Write, an online literary magazine about motherhood, and a columnist for Literary Mama where she chronicles her recent journey to adopt children out of foster care. When she is not writing, you will find her in the kitchen or the garden or walking the dog.

You do not do, you do not do
Stay out of my mind like you used to
Like a dark cloud suddenly rolling over-
No rain, no flowers bloom,
I am starting to understand living life without you. 

Each day I learn something new-
Something I did not know about you.
You think very deeply about all someone's,
And the fear of having to let me know made you collapse in
On yourself instead

And when the dark cloud comes in, shading your thoughts
It pours down memories of me and you
Showering your heart with love
Your soul already knows
I still pray the heavens guide me back to you. 

You left me in pitch black,
So now I sit in my bed 
Thinking that the hours between two and five am
Are the best times to sort through my head-
And yours.

I am not someone who takes shelter from a storm-
I am the storm, storm, storm.
That cloud had been following me for so long
I had forgotten that an exhale is not something
That is meant to be done one thousand times a day. 

Sometimes I feel you climbing back up my throat 
With all of the words I'm still too scared to say
And sometimes I forget to breathe,
But how each day I learn something new
If you water me, I'll water you. 

I have found that there is no use
In praying for the absence of pain,
it will always find you, it will seek you-- 
Do you not realize it is the very thing
That forces us into the light? 

Finding your face on a busy street, in an instant
I feel like I don't know who I am or what I've been to you.
And when I see you on the street
How am I supposed to stop myself
From wanting to paint your body with the words I don't know how to say? 

But I remember the mountains I grew
Strong enough to climb when you didn't love me back,
And now it's difficult to remember it as all genuine
When I realize each day
Everything you promised wasn't true 

I've learned that the sun will still come out 
And the words burning my insides will find their way out
Sooner or later the Universe will intervene
Reigniting our flame that has so long ago burnt out

Because I still see it --
The bits of me in you.
You made me feel like me, and I made you feel like you. 


Author Bio:
This is Alyson's version of a response poem to Sylvia Plath's "Daddy". It was an assignment for a poetry class and she never planned to share with anyone. Luckily, she had some incredibly supportive friends who have convinced her otherwise. She is 21-years-old and from Pittsburgh, PA.

As the years pass, I have grown more aware
of all of the things I seem unable to write about
love, for one thing. I don’t know how
to write anything convincing about love.

As my children grow up and my husband gets older
I grow more and more resigned to the things I can’t feel
love, especially, I don’t think I know what it is. 
If I sit and analyze my heart
I’m uncomfortably aware of this pantomime of caring
my fake day-to-day. This is something

I can write about:
my shortcomings as a human.
The things I haven’t done.
All of my lies. 


Author Bio:
Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Big Muddy, The Cape Rock, New Ohio Review, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, Ugly Girl, and The Yellow Dot of a Daisy. She has been a featured presenter at Write On, Door County (WI), North Coast Redwoods Writers' Conference (CA), and the Spirit Lake Poetry Series (MN). Her newest poetry collections, A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press) and I'm in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.) will be out late 2018.

​I want to tell you how I feel
But you don't have the time to steal

Sometimes life is just so complicated 
Why can't the two of us just live fixated 

You don't understand I have no deal
I just want your heart's true peal

It's safe to say you're done with me now
If only you knew how this could've played out

And as I call to say goodbye
You ignore my last reply


Author Bio:
Steven Martsching is a 21-year-old in the Navy.

Days dark or bright
Enemy’s love and friend’s hatred
Moments moody and hours of hope
In hunger, in abundance
In pains, in pleasure
I have tasted honey bitter than bile
And bile, than honourable honey

I’ve been on mountain top
Sometimes murky valley
In the rain, in the sun
Toiling, tilling
In tears, in laughter
I have learnt: 
To be happy in sorrow
To be focus in distraction
That a man is made in 
Days dark or bright


Author Bio:
Olatubosun David (born in Ilupeju Ekiti, Ekiti State) is a Nigerian writer. He studied Office Technology and Management but his special interest in poetry drives him. Most of his works condemned moral decadence and religion perverseness. Olatubosun is currently a confidential secretary in the department of Mathematical Sciences, Achievers University, Owo, Ondo-State, Nigeria.

​I was walking down the main road
when I spotted a pretty rose
I thought, “I don't like being alone.”
So I decided to bring her back home. 

The rose grew each day.
As I watched her, I could not look away.
I kept her in my living room so that
everyone could admire this beautiful plant.

My friends were amazed by the rose,
but of all the people, I've loved her the most!
For a couple of days she kept me company, silent.
And after a week or so, she became tired.

She had grown old, then it occurred…
I became bored with her.
I threw the rose out, needless to say.
I did not need her anyway!

I already forgot about her, when one day
I walked down the streets. Perhaps it was May?
In my neighbour's garden I saw the rose
and I felt a shiver from head to toe.

She was more gorgeous than ever,
never have I seen a rose look better.
I wanted her back, but she was already set.
All I was left with was deep regret.

I should've known better, but I didn't understand it.
She was so important to me, that I underestimated.
The rose was something that I did not deserve
Because of the pain I caused to her.

We sit under the Blue skies. Wearing 
Blue ties and smoking a Blue filtered 
cigarette


Like a diary cover, he bares a smile. 
His superficial shell does well to hide 
what he doesn’t share. 


Blue like the shirt on his back but also 
the sinking feeling inside of him. Like the 
ocean with its infinite horizon, yet it still 
seems so enticing.


Like the pallor of his 
lips and his fingertips. 
As he is gasping for air. 
It’s all Blue.

I call to ask if he wants to hang with no 
response. Little did I know that he already was.


But I look up at the Blue sky
A hint of sunlight in the corner of my eye
And it’s brightens up the color blue 
for a split second once again. 


Author Bio:
J. Kim has recently lost a friend to suicide. And with such a high rate of youth suicide in New Zealand, this is her way of self-expression and to shed light on the issue.