Prose
DEPARTURES
FLIGHT DESTINATION STATUS ───────────────────────────────────────────── EVERYONE ELSE THE DAY ON TIME YOUR ALARM SNOOZED DELAYED THE SUN YOUR CURTAINS ARRIVED THAT VERSION WHO HAD PLANS CANCELLED OF YOU YOUR COFFEE LUKEWARM BOARDING THE CITY OUT WITHOUT YOU DEPARTED THERE (AGAIN) THE PERSON THE OTHER SIDE NO WHO USED TO LONGER POUR A SECOND IN CUP SERVICE You are the only passenger who hasn't moved. Not because you're stuck — because somewhere between the alarm and the window you decided that staying still was the one honest thing left to do today. The skyline keeps commuting without you. It doesn't notice. Skylines never do. The mug on the nightstand isn't half-empty or half-full. It's just the only thing in the room that's given up at the same rate you have. Outside: a whole city, boarding. Inside: one woman, watching the gate close on a day she never checked in for. FINAL CALL — LAST BOARDING — ROW: YOUR SPINE, STILL FACING THE WRONG WAY
By Aarsh Malik3 months ago in Poets
Static in the Skin. Winner in Static Challenge. Top Story - July 2026.
They glitched us and took away the behaviour, replacing it with colour distortion that frames us against the odds. This poem moves through static, misrecognition, and the noise that rises when identity beats behaviour.
By Caitlin Charlton3 months ago in Poets
Absent Friends
There are names that seem to withdraw from life without ever consenting to leave the heart. They ask not of remembrance and send no message across the years, yet they return with a gentle certainty that belongs only to things which have survived every attempt to forget them. One receives them almost with surprise, as though meeting a traveler believed long dead who has entered the room without disturbing the latch.
By Nolan Reed3 months ago in Poets
