By Matt Mellor The sheer stone is far from silent. Broad waves – like words – wash definitions into me, meeting my meat. Telling sinews and fibers not to bother. Taunting joints and bones about outlasting them. The profound emptiness of trying, widened by the futility of resistance. My tears aren’t mine alone, they fall from countless others. Echoes of a pain that raged here. Lashed out and burst over the rocks. A red wave. A crimson squall. My face outlasted or came after th

By Ber I shed my skin and slip away A secret through loose lips Never to be caged again Let the mourners grieve Each reminisce the ghost loved and hated My laugh echoes in the hallway It rushes out the back door Caterwauling through the meadows The siren song of freedom calling My spirit pounds its feet on the ground Snaking around the trunks of trees Sighing into the mulch Watched by mother moon Howling with kindred kind Never to be seen by cursed human eyes again #DarkPoets

By Juno Guadalupe Leaping ahead— a fleeting thing, Through dead limbs Brittle brush and jagged thorn. Beneath black roots it slid— The savage inside pressed me on through rot and deep When my leg was torn, but blood pressed me on Scent—decay of flesh, bone— Stung the nose— I pinched it, Squinted forward so eyes could see An aching cave. “Show yerself!” into a hole I never thought could be. Only a knife— The blade belonged to me The lad tried to stick, but I stuck instead Stab