Her mind is like a battlefield, Full of fear and full of lies. Living in a cycle she cannot escape. She shuts her door, hiding from the world. Longing to be seen. Longing to be heard. She quietly waits at the corner of her bed, For someone brave enough to open the door. Loneliness creeps in. Doubt creeps in. She starts losing hope. “Is this the end for me?” Just when she is about to let go, Someone knocks at her door. Heart beating faster. Hands start trembling. With desperat

The afterlife has left me  stranded in my sister's house, at the edge  of catastrophe She’s  having cocktails amid a few ravages of grief here and there while she lays out littered pieces  of a breakable life. No self-pity for her. She’s too busy  watching the stars  run away  with the moon. I didn't know enough to be scared. But she did. By Barbara Shields

Snow covers property that lives outside as mold covers our food with soft, white hair and ice preserves our dead-town, traffic-wide as fungus that feeds on fields of highway air. Giant sheets of snow heaped over hills & parking lots as if each colossal animal our children made out of clouds molted its skin or were ripped through the ground, either way—our families freeze where something massive rots. By Joshua Wren