When I came back you were still passed out on the floor, sleeping so deeply that even as I blow-dried my hair, not a twitch registered on your peachily gleaming face. I climbed down the bed, naked except for a frilly pair of midnight-blue underwear, and pushed an extra cushion under your hip—but that woke you and you clambered onto my arms to get up, then immediately grabbed hold of the bin at hand and threw up in it.

Seeing you sick tightened a knot in my chest, stringing in nerves throughout my body till they were taut and tingling. As you heaved silently, it felt as though something was caught in my throat too: not nausea, but a pang that swelled, stretched the inner walls of my heart and soon permeated my whole being. It was pain, a vicarious kind (as I love you) but minus the actual discomfort you were in, even laced with a secret pleasure (as I love you). It was not unlike arousal in that a delectable sensation is derived from muscles contracting, airways narrowing and vessels distending; except there would be no dramatic release in this scenario, as the titillating heartache chased no climax in the loved subject’s pain.

A sweetly sour whiff began to exude from the bin, around which your arms like a feeble koala’s wrapped, and into which the lower part of your drooping head disappeared. I slipped my hand between your forehead and the bin lid, fearing that it might scratch your face. I fought the instinct of stroking your back and holding you close, as the sense of constriction could worsen the nausea. Stationing myself behind you, I limited myself to light caresses of your arm when the retching became laborious, and quick pecks during the interludes on your wide, domed back: an image of hardiness and frailty in one.

Something about that mix stirs the libido. I sensed my elevated heart rate as I guided you, step by step, shakily down the stairs to the shower; heard my inwardly choppy breathing as I took out the soiled bin bag and tossed your sweet-smelling clothes into the laundry; and felt the magnetic pull with which the sum of my energy hurtled toward the bathroom door, behind which you were imaginably fighting to regain lucidity under the steaming shower, as I waited outside with my ears pricked for any possible sign that you needed help. It’s funny how overwhelming concern can sometimes translate into desire. One of our best intimate moments was when you were running a fever from Covid: oh how wicked I was, taking advantage of you while you were sick; but how ardently your body craved and effused delight!

A twisted form of protectiveness—I suppose it is one of the many sick variants of love. It is reserved for the protector: you, who would melt away my tantrums with kisses, jump at any danger or ill feeling heading my way, and filter out inner turmoil rather than unload it on me. Where, in the depths of your armored soul, do your most primal, selfish, childlike frailties lie? When on account of some indefensible breach they finally emerge, to assure that it is okay to show face—be it a faint pout, a sterner voice, or a lapse of sickness—it is fated that my whole being rushes to tend to it, with my mental drive in its headlong stampede often dragging its libidinal counterpart into perverse excess.

The latter could be kept in check as potently as impelled, however, if love is true. As you were tucked into bed, with the blanket up to your cheeks and your dried-up hair in a poof—mumbling goofily I love you again and again since your muzzy mind couldn’t be sure if you’d said it yet—I echoed you, again and again, until your eyelids drooped. I remember smiling to myself that night, and the warm euphoria that swirled within and carried me to my dreams.

Vanessa is a Hong Kong-based writer, currently editing and writing for a local English newspaper. She holds a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Imprint, The Apostrophe, Eksentrika, and Adelaide Literary Magazine.

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Sally Arizona, a poet since age eight, writes happy poetry for her loving boyfriend and Maine Coon, sad poetry for herself, and fun poetry for shits and giggles. Sometimes the writing takes over and a short story comes out! She explores themes of love, loss, and religion in everything she does.

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Every step I’ve taken, I’ve let something shed.
Opening my birth certificate, I watch
the words slip off into the grass.

This is the most confused I’ve ever seen us.
Wondering so much about each other.
I am learning how not to lie.

Wondering what you wanted, where it is
you come from, and why you’re making waves.
I admit it’s not for me know.

I made a louche confession.
The teeth chattering softly after.
Of all the things that have passed my lips,
how little I would not retract.

Worst is knowing where we are.
It would be better losing proximity,
living with a bit of anonymity.
Or to take another’s name.

The moment holds a globe in its wet hands.
Not wet from rain or even tears.
It’s a water that’s always been here.
It’s like being born in the tub where you drowned.

Benjamin Goodman is a poet, counselor, and educator residing in the Hudson Valley.
He regularly offer poetry classes in the Hudson Valley, at Princeton University, and online. His work appears in publications such as Strange Matters Magazine, North of Oxford, Wildscape Lit, Grub Street, Vassar Review, and Berkeley Poetry Review.

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I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about this. Even my therapist couldn’t break it out of me. So many years of this being swept under the carpet, I wouldn’t know where to begin detangling it.

<bites lower lip>

I started losing my hair when I was 12. At one point I blamed the lice I had caught from a cousin, a fungal infection, at another. Today, I know it was neither.

When I was 14, my father took me to a hair specialist who would prescribe homeopathic (sugar) pills. They were fun to take for a child. That doctor, though, never had a diagnosis, just prescriptions. ₹2,00,000 and 3 years of treatment later, we admitted it wasn’t working.

<reaches over, takes a sip of water>

I can’t remember how exactly I looked at the time. But what I do remember is being petrified of being photographed. Angles I hadn’t brushed my hair for, profiles I hadn’t first practiced in my mirror a hundred times—all on shocking display.

Is this what I look like? It makes sense now why nobody wants to be friends with a girl this ugly.

After the homeopathic hack, I bounced around a few more clinics. Endocrinologists, dermatologists, and every time, the same story. “Period?” Normal. “Ultrasound?” Normal. “Take this medication, and less stress, sweetie.”

But my hairfall was no longer a source of stress. It was a sadness that had become a brick in my belly. Just a part of my life in ways it wasn’t for other people. An obsession with nutrition, hair masks made of onion puree and eggs on Fridays so that I wouldn’t have to shampoo it away until Monday, new hair oils brewed at home—the smells of gooseberry and curry leaves lingering for hours after. Each time it was a new hack a nosy aunt would drop on her way out the door.

A girl can’t be bald! Especially at such a young age! Who will marry her then?

<scrunches nose, almost tasting the putrid smell of sulphur at the back of her throat>

I would never change my hair, always keeping it short and worn in the same way every day in case it drew attention. Never got bangs, highlights, hair beads or any of the other mistakes young teens would make. I would crack jokes before anyone else could, beating them to the balding punch.

Things took a particularly bad turn when I was in Austria in 2019. I’d gone there to do my Masters, and the change in water had made it so much worse that I bought a wig (one that gave itself away if you looked too closely).

Once, I was riding the metro with a friend, and in conversation I had joked, “Oh the heat is so frustrating I want to rip my hair out!”

To which he muttered, “that would be a waste of great hair.”

I got home, deleted his number, packed away that wig and never spoke to him again.

<deep sigh>

After I moved back home, I found my miracle doctor. My father had managed to find a dermatologist who’d studied male pattern baldness—a pioneer in the research. And he was located right in my city!

After 25 years, the billionth blood test, ultrasound and a scalp biopsy, I had a diagnosis—androgenetic alopecia, or male/female pattern baldness, caused by hormones and a genetic predisposition.

Today I’ve realized something profound for myself. Healing from shame happens one unsuspecting day—when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror, say the meanest thing to yourself, and then get absolutely sick of it.

When I was younger, I spent so long ashamed of the body I was in that this shame kept me obsessed with trying to be prettier and more likable. As I grew up, the idea of time started to become a lot more tangible. It’s a long life, and this is the only body I have been given. What the shame and obsession spiral does is make me afraid of myself—it’s a personal prison of my own making.

I’m tired of my mind being the most unsafe place for me. Now, the pitying looks I sometimes get, do not land on shame—they land instead, on indignant.

Time does that to the traumatized. Those, for whom positive self-talk sounds ridiculous because they were never taught self-acceptance. How can you ‘gentle-parent’ yourself when you never had a gentle parent who showed you how it’s done? You haven’t been programmed to respond to that—it sounds bizarre.

There is literally nothing I can do to change this hair, it is what it is.

<small smile>

My hair today is doing better than it was five years ago. I’ve been spending so much of my own savings and my father’s retirement fund on PRP treatments, serums and pills. But one day, I know I’ll give up. I will be done trying to save something that cannot be saved. Give up the illusion I have been intercepted with—

that a woman’s appearance is in her control.

Ashrita Achar is a Bengaluru based audio journalist, podcast producer and sound artist. For the last four years, she’s worked across genres of history, development, climate and gender. She does audio stringing (on-site field reporting) for news and radio channels that require it, writes and presents, does translations/dubs for local languages, builds immersive audio installations with fellow artists, and also produces audio tours for museums. On her own, she makes sound art where she tinkers around with sounds, speech and rhythm as she explores personal themes of memory and identity through mini sonic vignettes. She adopts a heavily research-based practice, but with the malleability that allows for asking the question—what are the colours of sound in that story?

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Jenni Bee delights in creating stories, singer-songwriting, and spending time with her children near Philadelphia. Her emerging creative writing has been accepted to publications such as Riot Grrrl Musical, Monograph Magazine, Feel Literary Magazine, The Hot Mess Weekly, Verandah Literary and Art, and elsewhere. Find Jenni online at jennibeewrites.wordpress.com.

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I saw your silent soul-searching
A makeshift Scandinavian legend

In Norwegian lowlands and highlands
Where on the coastal shore

Of a glaciered freshwater sea
An arctic imitation for first

Generation immigrants and a
Fading taste of the former land

Though for the second, each birthday pause
Followed seven months of lonely

Hibernation before the spring thaw, a slow drip
Of melting snow drifts, and before the

Midnight sun where there was little
To do but still I couldn’t shake the

Misgivings of your Myrtle and Ted
Under the covers on polar nights

In Korea with the Army as a Captain
You drove a lumbering Doom Turtle

A 90mm cannon of contempt
One-hundred tons of freedom

An earthquake of premonition
And a fearful prosecutor in the face

Of lost freedom, all so Bernadette, through a veil,
Could smell the lilacs and eat waffle cones

In the sunset on a perfect August day
Licking the drips from the apex of an

Ice cream tower before it ran down
Your arm on a perfect summer day

At Bald Eagle Lake followed by a banana split
Commemorating the birthdays you loved

Like a big kid panning a hoard of gifts
Most of all blooming lilacs for a purple

Hedge attracting bees and butterflies
And a fragrant yard of French parfum

Bribing the quickening of amused
Neighbors and now. You’re gone for

Fourteen years, but I hear your voice
Your crowing Hey Kenny

Still ringing and I hold close your favored
Daughter as a daily reminder, blinded by

The full weight of a liberated love I’d first
Known, you took me as your own even

Though I was cautious but it was a common
Occurrence if not in life then in the

Aspirations of my hallucinations when I was
Young, knowing you were my waning saint

Kenneth Boyd, award-winning writer, is a neurodivergent poet and former jazz musician. He is disabled but uses his perspective to enrich his writing. His poetry appears in the Burningword Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Light Ekphrastic, Wayfarer Magazine, Empyrean Literary Magazine, eMerge Magazine, Flora Fiction, Unlost Journal, The Haikuist, Haiku Journal (forthcoming), and elsewhere. He is a winner of a Royal Palm Literary Award, Empyrean Poetry Competition, and Penumbra Poetry Contest. Grasshopper Dreams (2023) is his debut poetry collection. Kenneth is a graduate of the UCLAx Creative Writing Program and a former Assistant Poetry Editor at Southland Alibi magazine.

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All the while an ache tugs at one side of my stomach
from routine indigestion.
I’m grateful for it, for it balances
with the enjoyment of the ears.
If enjoyment is whole, the purity becomes unbearable
under threat of impending ruin.
Something I’ve learnt about bliss.

Vanessa Ho is a Hong Kong-based writer, currently editing and writing for a local English newspaper. She holds a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Imprint, The Apostrophe, Eksentrika, and Adelaide Literary Magazine.

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Alma describes herself as a, "61 year old Black feminist who continues to learn so much from her adult children and one year old grandson." She is a proud native of Oakland, California, but has spent most of her adult life in the south. She received her public interest law degree from New College of California and often writes about injustice. She also writes for both joy and healing and is a cultural storyteller and 17 year cancer thriver.

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Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather Review, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Moist Poetry Journal, Psaltery & Lyre, EcoTheo Review, Grist and other journals. His work has been selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Fight Nights (Blue Horse Press, 2025). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.

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Crickets keep time
like broken clocks.
Wind whistles
through trees like
an unlatched kettle.

I sit on the edge of the bed,
listening to the house settle;
old bones clicking,
old grief walking,
old stories pacing the hallway
like a restless animal.

There are walls here
that know exactly
what I’ve survived.
They creak differently
when I pass.

Night holds it all—
the ache, the after, the almost.

No witness, but the dark.
No mercy, but the moon.

May Garner (@crimson.hands) is an author and poet residing in rural Ohio. She has been writing for nearly fifteen years and has been sharing her writing online for over a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising (2023) and Melancholic Muse (2025). Her work has appeared in Querencia Press, Cozy Ink Press, Arcana Poetry Press, Livina Press, and Speckled Trout Review, among others.

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Your kebabs alone are worth braving brazenly vaping kids, inappropriate music videos on a dominating screen before neon lights on wide eyes. Clattering down each stair confronted by fluorescent bin stickers denoting table numbers on wood-clad faux sauna walls. Then running shouting men in the black street outside.

Sadiya (@sadipoetry) is a poet who draws on themes of identity, history and relationships to produce evocative and nuanced work that poses many questions. She inhabits a multicultural, diasporic world adopting different identities. Objects, politics, memories and characters trigger her work. Sadiya is a winner of the Rough Diamond Poetry Prize 2026, was long listed for the erbacce prize 2025. Her poetry has been featured in Zimmer Magazine, mnemotope by bog bodies, and on The Page Gallery, scribbled online, and Manic World, amongst many others. Sadiya lives in Lancashire, UK.

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I remember only one thing, and the eyes,
Were like taut flax strings,
Dug into me with sharp sockets,
Burned until white, almost ...
And there were multitudes,
From a third, from two, and from me, and all of them, lost in souls,
Turned into gray crystals, melted, melted ...
... And I’ve already fallen asleep ...
For now ...
And the ancient river froze ...

From poetry and light,
I’ll make brushes,
Paint clouds and dough,
So that the mistress will bake in the morning,
For good evening,
I’ll write words ...
And I’ll die at sunset,
Not far from the crossroads on the Boulevard des Capucines,
In the very heart of Italy ...

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I don’t want to say goodbye to anyone,
But simply draw a line
From the black impostor,
Crushing snake ...
And almost reaching the bridge, I wave my handkerchief
To the golden-domed island,
Which I dreamed of ...
Well, and then ...
At dawn I dive into the water,
I remember that I was a man ...
And now I look at the moon,
As ancient as the earth ...

About myself, who once lived ...

I read and look at the face distorted by death,
Now dead,
And does not sleep, but is turned to eternity ...
Perhaps I will be a Caucasian, a highlander, or a Kazan citizen ...
I remember that I was an impostor,
Freed from the shackles ...

Sometimes there comes a time when there is no time for anything ...
Sometimes a mountain falls down,
Curling up like a snail,
Absorbing the world to give birth to a point ...
I no longer remember the world,
But I so wanted to love ...

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On the death of Nabokov ...
Not to take and not to feed,
I will have to not resign myself ...
… to the fact that I could have closed the door
hid, surrendered
And washed myself ...
With water from a black well,
And there on the ice a girl dances “la” ...
I know it’s my last cigarette ...
But what to do when the smoke looks like a butterfly
From an ancient tribe ...

Not free, But along the edge,
Not to run, but to fall
Into the darkness, but into the water ...
And there the seal keeps swirling,
Dragging me down,
And my lungs fill with air, dead and lifeless
And I will become a ghost ...

Nasta Martyn is an artist, graphic artist, illustrator, poet, and writer. She graduated from the Academy of Slavic Cultures and has a bachelor’s degree in design. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in art history. In 2005, she created a series of graphics dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster, and in the same year, she wrote the series The Red Book. In 2022, she participated in international exhibitions in China, Taiwan, and the United States. In 2024, she received the Jury’s Special Prize for her poster in China.

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To support the magazine and its works within,
consider becoming a free or paid subscriber ($3/month!).

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Tyler Fisher of Ojibwe (Chippewa) heritage, is a professor of modern languages. His book-length translations of poetry include Martí’s Ismaelillo (Wings Press 2007), Lorca’s The Dialogue of Two Snails (Penguin 2018), and Lorca’s Cicada! (Penguin 2025).

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Coming Up Short (Aperture) is reader-supported. To support the magazine and its works within, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber ($3/month!).

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I trace the floorboards, its fault lines,
with armored bags under each eye,
and I find the crack where his laughter ended.
The dust collected on the nightlight,
the smoke fogging every corner
after December’s storm.

Outside, the moon climbs like a borrowed ladder.
I fold the map of the house in my pocket,
its linen creases keeping the shape of loss.
On the bus home, I press my palm where my heart used to live.

May Garner is an author and poet residing in rural Ohio. She has been writing for nearly fifteen years and has been sharing her writing online for over a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising (2023) and Melancholic Muse (2025). Her work has appeared in Querencia Press, Cozy Ink Press, Arcana Poetry Press, Livina Press and, Speckled Trout Review, among others. Find her work on Instagram (@crimson.hands).

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Coming Up Short (Aperture) is reader-supported. To support the magazine and its works within, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber ($3/month!).

Subscribe now

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There is a shape to me. Like all shapes, it has an edge.
Like all shapes, it is defined. Like all borders, there
are sides …
And those who are unaware that they have crossed
the border will soon become aware.
This occurrence
serves no false purpose-
only the
Shape-
Of
Me

EiLeen Doster is … INSERT BIO

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Aesop chuckled at the trick and noted everything down, inscribing it on his little wax-covered tablet.

Later he contemplated the majestic Swan as it glided among the water lilies. This proud display was only comparable to that of the Peacock, who spread his iridescent fan and paraded along the edge of the pond, as if admiring his reflection. Meanwhile the busy Bees flew tirelessly from flower to flower, and the Ass, with a rather stupid look on his face, stubbornly resisted all the zookeepers’ efforts to get him moving.

Aesop, feeling highly satisfied, jabbed a firm full stop on his wax tablet.

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The next day, when Aesop returned armed with his notes, the animals behaved in a way that did not seem to match any moral. Quite the contrary: when the Fox got up to his old tricks, yowling and foaming at the mouth, the zookeeper grabbed that predictable dunderhead by the scruff of the neck and tossed him into a cage to await the veterinarian. The animals ate in peace, with the Wolf dining serenely among them.

Turning his attention to the pond, Aesop saw that the Swan was now walking awkwardly along the shore. Just as ungainly was the Peacock, who had dragged his tail through the mud, and it now drooped humbly behind him. And instead of worker Bees, drones buzzed in the apiary.

“No!” the Greek shouted. “That’s not how it’s supposed to be!” But the animals paid him no attention.

Only the Ass responded to Aesop’s cries, without a trace of obstinacy. He drew near with a wise look in his contemplative eyes. He delicately nuzzled up to Aesop as if trying to read the notes on the tablet.

Well, that was the last straw. Aesop would have to resolve these discrepancies, or else, at this rate, he would end up writing a novel instead of fables.

Fortunately, he came up with a solution: he would give them all voices. Yes, with the power of speech, they would surely keep to their appropriate categories.

Tyler Fisher of Ojibwe (Chippewa) heritage, is a professor of modern languages. His book-length translations of poetry include Martí’s Ismaelillo (Wings Press 2007), Lorca’s The Dialogue of Two Snails (Penguin 2018), and Lorca’s Cicada! (Penguin 2025).

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Coming Up Short (Aperture) is reader-supported. To support the magazine and its works within, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber ($3/month!).

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Beneath the surface,
roots are negotiating territory,
algae rehearses takeover,
insects write brief manifestos
with their legs.

Stillness is not peace.
It is a gathering.

The myth lied when it said
chaos came after.
Chaos was the water
before it learned the word sky.

I kneel at the edge
and feel the pull
of something unfinished.

If I fall in,
it will not be an accident.
It will be an answer.

May Garner is an author and poet residing in rural Ohio. She has been writing for nearly fifteen years and has been sharing her writing online for over a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising (2023) and Melancholic Muse (2025). Her work has appeared in Querencia Press, Cozy Ink Press, Arcana Poetry Press, Livina Press, Speckled Trout Review, among others. Find her work on Instagram (@crimson.hands).

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A new pill bottle was placed beside me a few days ago, its label crisp and tight across its smooth skin. It hasn’t been touched yet. I remember when you used to reach for me and press my insides to your lips, cradle them against your tongue. My lid would pop open with a small twist.

I haven’t heard that sound in days.

This morning you pulled open the bone-white blinds and the sunrise spilled in, swollen and warm. Patches of light stipple your face and forearms like saffron scales. You turn toward the desk and I see you clearly now. Your shoulders sag. The skin around your waterline is purple, as if the night is still leaking from your eyes. Wisps of hair cling to your scalp like sap sliding down bark. Your lips purse as you sit. The computer wakes. Your eyes close.

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Somewhere above me water gathers, learning the shape of falling. Soon it begins tapping against the roof, soft, patient dripping. You chew your fingernails. Your hands look sharp now, jagged.

Icicle fingers stab and scrape against the keyboard. You leave for a while that day. When you return your face is paler, and red crescents bloom in the crevices of your nails.

You sit again. You write for a long time. Sometimes your hands freeze above the keyboard, suspended as if caught in ice. Then suddenly they move again, quick, urgent, striking the keys like rain. The light moves slowly across the desk. Then you stop. Your hands hover over me. For a moment I think you remember. Your fingers drift across my plastic skin, warm and careful, tracing the grooves where my label once clung. I almost expect the familiar twist. The pop of my lid. The quiet release of what I hold.

Instead, you lift me. You carry me across the room. The trash can waits in the corner, dark and patient. You drop me inside. The fall is short. I land against a crumpled sheet of paper. Its wrinkles press flat against my side, and through the folds I can read the ink bleeding across it.

A poem. Or the beginning of one.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am staring into Heaven.

But Heaven is on its knees—humid and hungry—

crawling through honeybees,

their bright bodies burning and breaking beneath holy skies.

Nirvana blooms with welts,

oozing pus.

I tell God I’m sorry.

My lips must sleep.

The ether is atrophied.

God is permanence.

Because when I press my feelings into permanence,

There is something permanent about me.

Bella Melardi is a poet and author. She writes about the political and personal. She attends OCADU.

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See the way she sits by the window
Smiling, eyes closed, at dust dancing in sunlight?
The way her pupils flutter, arms fling
Around for balance after a spell?
Words don’t reach her; a slight singe on the skin.

You’ve met someone who fumbles a bit at words.
They pack your luggage before you part,
Listen to your sobs, cross an ocean to make
Your favourite meal, and wait back home
To wrap you up in days cared for.
Words play a minimal part in their love.

You don’t like yourself at winning arguments,
Skirting things that really matter with rhetoric.
You squirm when people overanalyse themselves
Without touching who they really are.
You ache for those who fare so well at words
Yet so pitifully at life.

He who’s won accolades for his literary flair
Now finds the real prize – the joy of doing –
Beyond his fingertips: the warm moisture of laundry
Out of the washer, the velvety sigh of an avocado
Relenting to the fruit knife … formidable, undoable.
The more she drifts to the wordless,
The more he clings to his words,
A constant in a life of change and loss.

Taking after him, you hang on to words for dear life:
The sky turns leaden and society goes stale
If you’re kept from reading or writing for too long.
Words at their highest revive sensitivity and soul,
And at their minimum validate the existence of things.
The crippled worship words; but too used
To the crutch, they forget the miracle
That they once walked.

Words are not always useful, you say,
To which he says: easier said than done.
But he tries. He’s started fixing her coffee
Instead of telling her to change; gulped down
His urge to lecture when things go wrong.
At the park he joins her in quiet surrender
To the reign of banyans and melaleucas –
Erupting into verse only in his study
Where he can be sure of words’ dominion.

Words are not always useful, you say,
To them who’ve crossed an ocean for you
But not so much into the you behind your words.

Feel the way their energy shifts, like a ship
Anchored, when you read them your poem?
The way they open up to receive
As you go on a ramble?
Words will reach them; a soft tap on the heart.

Vanessa is a Hong Kong-based writer, currently editing and writing for a local English newspaper. She holds a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Imprint, The Apostrophe, Eksentrika, and Adelaide Literary Magazine.

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