Free Verse
purgatory
You wake up with your head pillowed on something wet and cold Your nose scrunches uncomfortable Your eyes feel like heavy lead, and they valiantly try to flutter open You're unsure of how long it takes you to open your eyes When you do, the world around you is dream-like and hazy Soft, yellow light in the distance bobbing up, down, and up again A lantern, your mind supplies groggily still half asleep and wary You peel yourself off the- forest ground? Now that you look around, you realize you're surrounded by tall, lush pines The smell hits you first petrichor and half rotted leaves It was your favorite scent- was? is. Is your favorite scent your skin prickles in animal fear The lantern wielder is close now but you can't make out any distinct features He- She- They are wearing a cloak over their face Leather gloves that squeak against the silence you're now registering Where are the crickets? you think to yourself Where is the sun? you deliriously ask yourself Even with no sun evident, the sky you see peeking is mottled It almost looks like a bruise, you realize faintly Blues, and pinks, and deep purples so beautiful it makes your chest ache The crunching leaves stop and you can't help but feel like prey This stranger comes to a halt at your sodden, pititful self They extend a hand, and still you can't make out flesh You take the hand anyway and make a surprised noise as you're lifted It was October, you remember distantly samhain, to be exact The strangers touch is ice cold but feverishly, you think you're colder They tug you along, lantern bobbing up, down, side to side The yellow and red leaves are crunchier here where your body didn't crush them You think about apologizing but then think about your life before Always spent apologizing, never letting yourself take up space You stop and stumble as the stranger keeps going doesn't look back at your scared face Because you realize now, where you are Why it is eerily silent with nary a rustle You remember- an accident? Water, freezing water, so cold and biting You shiver in half remembered memory tugging weakly at the firm grip You stumble after it resigned to your fate
By Adora Aguirreabout a month ago in Poets
Scrawl
Wednesday the 16th of September, 02:49am, Ireland (Listening to Laurie Anderson). I felt a twinge and I feel it everyday because I keep waking up. Up with people. And they go about like they own the planet they sold long ago for dreams no one slept on. A sleepless line of smoothed witlesses that bawk and bacaw like a flock at friction; coarse and honest. They don’t count as voices no matter how much they talk talk talk but they linger just as loudly and long. People are reasons to go back to sleep and hope for better dreams to live with and savour. Before they disappoint you again with still being here where you’re alive again. If only; a wish of so many no more than yourself. Did you know that you can’t scream without people thinking there’s something wrong with you because they can’t ever be wrong with their Flattened. That’s what it’s called; their Flattened. Devoid and poor of friction so the assumptions calcify into bedrocks of rhetorical jousts and jabs and repetition, drilling through the scalp and hijacking the stringy nerves webbing the body. Pull, they pull, in great handfuls strands and wonder why you curse and cry anguished sobs. What a strange hurtful, hateful, spiteful, spineless thing you are when you have nothing good. “Good.” A worthless word, ironically. Good is sellable. Good is a tag. Good has a cost. Good is never free nor worth valuing. Pricing? Sure. Sticking a nice little marker on like some gauche tactless denotation of what you’re tricked in pursuing to bed something for a chance to die with people watching? Why not? But no; not for you, not for nothing. Not for you, not for nothing. Not for you, nothing! How silly! How can you believe that? Get in the Flattened. Get in. Don’t want all that texture, do you? We thought not. Good. Finally good.
By Conor Matthewsabout a month ago in Poets
A Morceau to October's Ember Blush. Top Story - September 2026.
🍂 I step out of a room where September's light is slowly dimming. Dear friend, it's not so much an end, but more of a loosening - like a hand that was holding yours and slowly now realizes it must let go.
By Novel Allenabout a month ago in Poets
