By Najma Salad Frame Through the stillness of the night, I hear the motion of your heart. Skipping beats between breaths But all of it feels right. You feel free among crowded thoughts,  As if you were a kite hanging mid-air. You’re constantly going with the flow. Unbothered by time, though  You forget how much you owe. With newly fed fear you undergo. Darkness after darkness from what you dug…

By Krishandra Murphy How many times have I been here before? 6? Well it is still all the same, the wooded interior that seemed to have every board on the building dented, along with a sheriff; well maybe a junior sheriff that always has to escort me. The wooden building had always been the same with the most abundant sheriff sign always in the front, along with of course, a…

By Sol Madderom Below me, lye colors, the same as the ones found scattered throughout my sister’s body, were given to me by trembling hands so that I forget myself in their metallic taste. My feet dangle, hovering above the cool wooden floors that creak when I inhabit Nate the Great past my bedtime. Father slumps on the plastic-wrapped couch beyond the kitchen door as my sister fixes dinner. I…

By August Hudson-Vadnais FALL DOWN Falling through a maze of glass I fall down, don’t get up I can see the way outside And yet I choose to stay within Falling through a maze of glass I fall down, won’t get up I can see the way outside People begging me to leave the walls And yet I stay within Forever I Fall down LOOK WITHIN I look inside myself…

By Emi Gonzalez Perez I know what it means when she leaves, when she groggily rises from the crumpled cotton sheets, silently and quietly. I know the guilty hang of her head and the curt snap of her words as she collects her wrinkled clothes from the floor of my bedroom. The sound of her nails scratching the hardwood in her haste to get away from me. She ignores me,…