2025 Issue

Untitled Art: Michael Niemyjski

—© 2025 by Michael Niemyjski

My Fermi

I wonder if somewhere out there is where you are. 

Beyond that dark void, 
separated by terrestrials and gaseous.
Spinning slowly around a star 
within the galaxy. 
Just like me,
do planets of the past bound you too? 
Rocks that have gone cold; history dying with them. 
Their only response now is silence.
When I look up to the endless sky to the delayed illumination
I think about you 
and I wonder 
do you think about me too?
Or am I thinking about someone of the past,
wondering about your home that has been long gone, 
thinking of dead planets that are before my own, 
and those after? 
Are they graves of what used to be? 
A predecessor of mine?
An example of mine 
once the water dries out, the green withers, and the core becomes cold. 
The life in me was it taken from you?
Am I a result of your death? 
Or do I wonder about no one? 
My thoughts and curiosity are about the dead, 
towards nothing at all. 
Your life simply a figment of my desire

Their silence—your silence … are the only answer to these silly wonders.

                                                        —© 2025 by Shia Chang

Untitled Photo: Allie Jaworski

 —© 2025 by Alile Jaworski

What Happens After the Opera

An open door, in haste left unlatched. Crystal vase of blush roses and baby’s breath. Empty eyes unseeing. Heavy rain, a dark night sky.

An empty chair at the vanity. Dark chocolate curls. Sheet music scattered on the plush rug. A forgotten, soggy hat.

Candlelight flickering across the room. A dressing robe, still worn but stained now. An old letter, open to be reread. A false name, not to be confused with a stage name.

A bed, never unmade. A won heart, led astray. Aleftover string of pearls. A song forever unsung.

The deadly shadow of strung pearls’ touch, yellow and purple and green. Lips still painted red, smudged. Heavy velvet drapes pulled shut. A jewelry box left open, empty.

Still-damp footprints printed around the room. 

Two glasses of expensive wine. A cheap tin band on an unmoving finger. A woman who seems asleep, yet isn’t.

A murder.

A motive.

A suspect.

Never caught.

—© 2025 by Madeline Perry

Hannah

—©2025 by Erin Karsten

Cacophony

…
50 minutes pass
and no dialogue has been exchanged

—©2025 by Kimberly Rouse

Untitled Photo 1: Karrie Wortner

—©2025 by Karrie Wortner

My Voice

I hate my voice. 
I don’t want it to ever be heard. 
It’s juvenile, squeaky, high-pitched tones.
They’ve been thrown, sticks and stones. 
How can I have a voice without being heard?
Draw it, sign it, photograph it?
Ink to paper, the written word. 
That’s how I’ll make my voice be heard.   

—©2025 by Karrie Wortner

Night

Darkness, my embrace,
Quiet, my song, 
Fear, my presence.

My abuser, the dark,
The antithesis of the day, 
The dreaded night.

I was warned about you, 
I was conditioned to avoid you, 
But my love was too strong, 
I found myself with you so often, 
I found it to be natural.

Our relationship was not one of love,
I was so scared, 
The questions keeping me awake,
Echoed in my skull, 
Tormenting my soul.

You are a perfume-glazed spider web, 
Drawing me in with enchanting fumes,
And trapping me in a vicious cycle.
Even trapped I ask myself,
Is it really so bad?

You steal the time out of my life,
Milking me like cattle of a farm, 
And tossing me to the day,
Where society would mark me, 
Outcast.

They wouldn’t understand,
The infinite darkness,
The everlasting silence,
The wealth of time,
Intoxicating. Dangerous. An illusion.

—©2025 by Shane Ewig

Untitled Photo 1: Cassidy MacArthur

—©2025 by Cassidy MacArthur

Addiction

Everything is great, 
and your life is going well.
But I’m going to get a hold of you,
and make your life a living hell.
Not only will you lose things,
like your job, car, and house.
But you won’t even care, 
When you lose your son and spouse.
You will become abusive, 
to people that you love. 
You will be filled with anger,
and stop praying to the God above.
Your friends will disappear,
and talk behind your back.
But you won’t accept anyone’s advice,
because it’ll feel like an attack.
You will start to steal,
to feed the addiction as it grows.
You will be hospitalized,
when your emotions hit all-time lows.
Your body will waste away,
because you will choose drugs over food.
You won’t even notice,
because of your elevated mood.
And when you’ve lost everything,
you won’t even care.
Because deep down you know,
that the drugs will always be there.
You’ll become a painful memory,
and people will rebuild without you.
But you won’t care at all,
because that’s what drugs do.

—©2025 by Kristin Nigh

The Empress

Daughter of Chaos, the queen of night
Fierce, though unsure of her power
A knight wrapped in calcite

Her heart stops at the plight
Pacing and roaming, stuck in her tower
Daughter of Chaos, the queen of night

Accompanied by the goddess of sight
Theia reveals the chart of the hour
To find the knight wrapped in calcite

Written in the stars of Gemini, oracles of light 
The nocturnal flower spells out the letters
Daughter of Chaos, the queen of night

Lavender infuses their haze-filled sight
Constellation of Pisces devours
The knight wrapped in calcite

One kiss at twilight, their bond ignites 
Illuminates the night in a meteor shower
Daughter of Chaos, the queen of night
Frees the knight wrapped in calcite   

—©2025 by Chloe Smith

Revision

What’s it gonna be?
Straight hair, curly hair
Long hair, short hair, 
Stiff as a shaft of wheat hair
Or welcome the invasion of
Green hair?
Washed hair, ready to perm hair,
Pretty in pink sponge curled hair
Covered in towel hair
Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock
Work your magic hair,
Ammonia smell will kill me hair,
Don’t breathe for 3 minutes.
Ahhhhh..........
Here comes the Cavalry,
At last... neutralizer hair.
The only welcome part of the deal.
Not quite done hair....
Rinse hair, blow dry hair, 
or just frizzies for now? 
Whatever... 
You’ll only be here ‘til next time
Hair.

—Poem ©2025 by Dorothy Seehausen
Art ©2025 by Emma LeCloux

My Older Sister and I 

—©2025 by Brooke Schoening

Five Years Old

If you could go back in time, where would you go?
I would go back to being five years old.
When losing my teddy was my only fear,
And I didn’t try to solve problems with beer.
When drugs came from doctors and not from a syringe,
When someone could touch me and I wouldn’t cringe.
I miss that age, when everyone was my friend,
And I never wanted to make my own life end.
Before I had boyfriends, before I had bills,
Before I needed anti-depression pills.
If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t grow old.
When I was that young, the world didn’t seem cold.
When magic was real and Santa existed,
When love was pure without pain being inflicted.
If I had known then what I know now,
I wouldn’t have grown — though I don’t know how.
If I could go back in time, I’d go back to being five.
When I never felt like I had to struggle to survive.            

—©2025 by Arizona Iding

Sunday Stroll

This image was taken in Grand Teton National Park; this was Kira’s first encounter with a wild moose.

—©2025 by Kira Ashbeck

Gnawing

Problems beget problems
A weed usurps a garden
A clogged pipe bursts
An untreated wound rots
Problems beget solutions
An overgrown plant is pruned
A leaking pipe is patched
An open wound is cauterized
Solutions beget problems
Pruning opens a wound
Fixing a pipe leaves wet hands
Cauterization burns a bridge
Things are simple
Before a Lover
A beautiful problem
A horrible solution
Problems beget sorrow
Solutions beget tragedy
Love begets pain

—©2025 by Paul Christopherson

Untitled Photo 1: Joseph D. Warner

—©2025 by Joseph D. Warner

To Worship the Moon

I wish the Sun would disappear awhile
If only so the Moon could shine once more
And when the Stars caress my face, I’d smile
For then I’d breathe the Darkness all around

When people fall asleep, I’d dance outside
The Ground beneath my feet would rise and fall
The Trees would sway to rhythms I create
And Wind would guide me to the place I seek

At last, I’d reach the Rocks beneath the Sky
My knees hit Stone; my arms raised up to You
To offer up my gratitude for all
The Tide, the Light, my sight, all thanks to You

Would You believe I’d do this all for You?
Oh Moon believe, Your wish is my command
I’d end the World to taste Your Light once more

—©2025 by Grace Zander

Déjà Vu

When your weight is in my arms
I feel it, sometimes. 
The quiet brush of truth
like blades of grass against the backs of my legs 
in the hot, hot, sun. 
You stir in your sleep, but you do not wake.
For a moment, I am back there,
where it all began.
A mass of invisible light so heavy 
that we cannot help but be pulled into it. 
Red string be damned.
We would be here either way.
Perhaps this is everything, the only thing,
the only part that matters. 
You dip me down into cool blue waters 
and untangle me, memory by memory. 
Coax me off the ledge,
peel the layers of time from me.
You bring out whoever I was supposed to be,
all the way back in The Before. 

—©2025 by A.D. Powers

Untitled Photo: Courtney Fitzgerald

—©2025 by Courtney Fitzgerald

Night Violators

Based on a true personal experience....

I awake solitarily… to the darkness.
Yet…, alone…, I am not.
Ocular senses detect unworldly unworldly inky shadows.
Two of them enclose on me where I sleep.
Blackening darkness like-death they are.
From their black mass of a body,
Protrude multiple whip-like appendages that
Enlarge and then dissipate.
The pulsating shape-shifting Entities 
Move in unearthly ways.
Terrified, my body lays still as a corpse.
Yet…, my sclera uncontrollably dart back and forth to the Entities.
As if visual awareness somehow could protect me
From spine-chilling intruders that violate home in space.
I wonder, what they will do to me.
What if they can detect the slightest movement of my eyes?
I will be exposed.
My lack of movement, I thought, would render me invisible,
But, it does not.
Creatures of the night, await my capture from bedside.
Void of all facial features, the pulsating anomalies are consumed
By the ebony flames that lick their core.
Appendages constantly absorb and expand within each other.
Do I escape…? Can I escape…?
I envision their spawny tentacles infringing upon my body.
Diluting me of my existence.
I have to move before the predator decides to devour the prey.
My eyelids, clutched tightly together, begin to quiver.
My muscles shudder as I lunge from the bed.
My feet feel the comfort of the carpet, 
Yet… my ankles await the cold skeletal grasp of death.
I reach out frantically for the safety of a light switch.
I flip it on to feel the power and warmth of light beat upon my face.  
I opened my eyes to face these Entities on my own level, and
I stare in eerie silence at an empty room.
The Things of the darkness suddenly cease to exist.
I am…alone?

—©2025 by Teresa L. Harvey

Kingly

—©2025 by Verity M. Langan

Mirror Image

mirror image
not just a him, not just a her
mirror image
a blend, a mix, no need to choose
dressed in the truth of who you are
neither too much nor too little
just a being
alive in the space between
they don’t know what to call it
but you don’t need a name
mirror image
unwritten, untamed
just you, just me
and everything in between

—©2025 by Ginger Knauer

Elevator

Everyone becomes a different version of themselves in isolation.
To enclose oneself in a box feels like an endless elevator ride.
I can feel the motion, pressure changing through my feet. 
Up and down, but nothing seems to move.
My box is unchanging.
Waxy, windowless walls like dull mirrors distort and warp
Each muted reflection, indistinguishable from the rest.
No longer I see myself.
The buttons are lying.
Fun to press, but scary the thought:
Who knows where I’m going?

—©2025 by Story Nelson

The Snowman's Cry

The snowman cried; oh what would he do?
The winter was ending, and spring came anew.
He had stood vigilant, unwavering in stance,
He had waved to the children, and around him they’d danced.
In the blustering winds, and in the chilliest of days,
They had looked to him for joy, and in his company they’d stayed.
His love for them was pure, like the snow on his hide,
His care was eternal; it was them he would guide.
For that was his purpose, his reason of birth,
They had built him from nothing, and given him worth.
They had gifted him his body, with its mittens and nose,
They had given him a scarf, and with it a pose.
And on his head, they left him a hat,
And with a big smile, in the yard he sat.
As a beacon of hope, and a symbol of bliss,
In the darkest of nights, and the darkest abyss.
He was used to the cold, with its bitter bite,
For it was his home, and he was its knight.
But then came the spring, and with it the growth—
Of all that is green, and all that is both—
The beginning of one life, and the end of another,
For the snowman was melting, but there was no other—
Solution at hand, and the children had gone,
Moved on to their bikes, moved on to the lawn.
The snowman cried out “but what about me?!”
But the children were deaf; they were deaf to his plea!
He was out in the yard, withering away,
Like a rose without water, and a toy without play.
But what of his love, and what of his care?!
His hat fell off; his head was now bare,
It was retrieved by a child, who paid him no mind,
But his eyes were gone too, and now he was blind.
A pile of snow, was all that was left,
Of where was once joy, was all but bereft.
In his final moment, it was then that he knew,
That his life had meant nothing, and there was naught he could do.

—©2025 by Noah Spellich

be the light

—©2025 by Verity M. Langan

The One Who Watches

I am simply the one who watches.

Others above are more well known to those below. Some above create. Some destroy. Some help those below. And others still seek to trick them. But all have been given a name.

I have no name. 

I am simply the one who watches.

My heaven is a small cabin just between the old forest trees and a small line of black sand. All I can see out my front porch is the endless expansion of a large lake I once knew; in life, that is. I have no need for that knowledge now. I know the water, and it knows me.

This place has no name. 

I have no name. 

I am simply the one who watches. 

The tide is my eyes. It is always low, leaving behind small, reflective pools of lake trapped between coarse rock. The water here is clear. As is my vision. It is here I spend most of my time, or what I assume to be known as time according to the memories I see. The sun does not rise nor set as I walk between the shallow waves. 

Time does not touch this place. 

This place has no name. 

I have no name. 

I am simply the one who watches.

Different pools reveal different things. The past is easy to find, trapped under a thin sheet of ice, unable to be breached. The future I have yet to know. It is too far out for me to swim to it. And the current moment is where it always resides; here and there, a cluster of lives intertwined, a lonely hole cast out by a broken stone. But I cherish them all. No one else will. Especially not those I watch. 

They do not notice how fast time passes. 

Time does not touch this place. 

This place has no name. 

I have no name. 

I am simply the one who watches.

I watch them all be born. I watch them all die. I watch the twists and turns, the joys and despair. What I love most, though, is watching the ordinary. The days taken for granted. The moments lingered in, for just one more look at the sunlight. The words said-but-not-said, and the words that need not be said at all. Their realization that, in the end, time is both their greatest curse and most wonderful blessing.

They live all their time as they are meant to. 

They do not notice how fast time passes. 

Time does not touch this place. 

This place has no name. 

I have no name. 

I am simply the one who watches.

Yet no one watched me. Perhaps that is why I stay. So they feel appreciated, so each story is known, even by just one. 

They will never name me. They will never know me. This is a comfort. I do not need a following, nor name to know I am appreciated. It is simply my duty, my purpose in this place. 

For they will all find their place, as they live their lives the way they are meant to.

They will not need notice how fast time passes for time does not touch this place.

I have no name, yet I know just who I am:

I am the one who watches.

—©2025 by Natalie Johnson

Golden Sun

—©2025 by Noah Spellich

Untitled Photo 2: Joseph D. Warner

—©2025 by Joseph D. Warner

I Trust You, Too

We met under unusual circumstances in the blazing summer heat of July. I was stuck in a dead-end relationship, and you, well, you were picking up the metal shards of your life that your ex destroyed in that car wreck. It was supposed to be a business transaction, a deal between two strangers who had a common good to trade. Most of the time, it’s a quick and easy handshake, and I think we both expected finality to ride in after midnight. The deal was set for the end of the month. You’d pay for the night, I’d pay for dinner. Even split so we both would walk away with no loose ends, no need for a second meeting. Life has a funny way of making easy deals go so awry. So do cowboy hats and pretty smiles.

It would be a cliché to say that meeting you was like coming up for air. You weren’t perfect, your flaws shone bright in the setting summer sun, but there was something more substantial in the wake of your presence. You were strong and resilient in the face of everything that has happened to you. You moved with an aura of confidence, sure of everything in this life. Me, I stumbled my way through, bumping every table corner on the way. I met you, and I was in awe. Everything you battled inside and out made you the man that stood before me. I envied your rebirth.

You took the time out of your life to teach me to dance that night. What an odd turn of events. It wasn’t pretty, and I wasn’t meant for dancing, but that felt like the first time either of us have truly laughed in months. The small dance floor was carved out of a house that belonged to the ghosts that resided there. A coffee table pushed into a pile of dog hair that was disguised as a couch. Whiskey, on the rocks, warming under the lamp glow of the side table. I haven’t listened to those songs in two years, a permanent scar that sears a new oozing abscess in my heart every time I hear the opening notes. The trade afterward was made with little fuss, little emotional attachment. A quick and easy handshake deal. In the moments after came a question that solidified a permanent trade agreement that would last years to come. A question that while you abhor, I savor.

—©2025 by Jennifer Russell

Fire in the Sky

—©2025 by Noah Spellich

The Phoenix Rises Again

Standing on the beach 
The cool tides caressing my feet. 
I gaze toward the ocean and take a deep breath. 
I plunge into the sea. 
Being one with the water. 
Calm yet turbulent.
Highs and lows.
The storms. 
The ocean’s tides and rocky waves, a magnificent sight to behold.
The adversity I must overcome.
Nothing can stop me.
Not the storms.
Not the waves.
Not the beasts of the water  
The ones who seek to drag me down and take me to the depths of the sea 
Where only darkness resides 
I elude them with every stroke and kick of my feet
I lift my head above the water, air filling my lungs. 
The sun’s warmth on my skin
A short break. A much needed break.
No matter what, I will swim toward the sun.
My only hope
Even when it disappears in the night.
Then I’m left with the moon.
I have to swim. I have to keep going.
The only way I can go is forward.
There is no treading lightly on the journey of life.
The edge of the ocean is where the promised land lies.
I know the sun will be back. 
I can see it glowing on the edge of the horizon.
Its golden orange light paints the water’s surface, 
Turning it into a shimmering canvas of hope.
A divine beacon of hope.
Reborn with every rise.
Just like the Phoenix
I too am reborn with every rise.
The glorious Phoenix.
The fiery spirit that guides me.
The one that flies high and fills me with pride.
Because no matter what, the Phoenix always rises.
In the end, I always prevail, just like the Phoenix.
The glorious Phoenix. 

—©2025 by Musa Abdikadir

Ripples

—©2025 by Owen Fezatte

Wading at Dusk

It is dusk, and memories start to fade.
Gently, I take the cloth under her head.
Her hunger staved, she is a woman fed.
I practice care that was her lifelong trade.

We embark upon our evening parade.
Through the well-lit halls, this elder is led.
She is cared for and not caring instead.
It’s a mirror of what she once displayed.

In time toward her queen-size bed we wade.
Below there’s a photo from when she wed.
To her face a blanket I slowly spread.
Once before bedtime, she would have prayed.

Her brown eyes light up tucked into her bed.
She recognizes her own name that I said.

—©2025 by Matt Jones

Through the Window

—©2025 by Verity M. Langan

Root Rot (It'll Come for You Eventually)

There’s an evil living deep within your sister’s body. You know it’s there, you’ve seen the signs. You caught her playing down by the creek one day, the same creek where you had once buried the remains of the monster that had taken over your dear old mother. There are no places to hide by the creek. You know this. There’s no way that the monster wouldn’t have found your sister, its taint transferring from where it lay dormant in your mother’s corpse and latching onto your sister’s abundant lifeforce. 

It’s not a big creek. The grass is thin, dead leaves slowly pushed by a stream that only has any force when it rains. Most of the time it’s just a jumble of tree roots reaching like desperate fingers into wet earth. It was under these grasping roots you buried your mother. You spent long hours digging through the mud, trying to mold the wet earth into a shape that would hide the body of your mother and protect your family. The mud clung to your hands like blood. You had to burn your clothes afterward, the brown stains feeling too much like an admission of guilt.

You know you probably should have buried your mother in a different location, one more isolated and protected, one better suited to contain the evil. And yet all you could think of was how she used to love the rush of the stream when it rained, the sound of the flowing water, watching the leaves and dead grass tumble past as they were pushed by a steady current. For a second, you had remembered the mother before the monster. And now your sister will pay the price.

You don’t know when it first latched onto your mother, but you do remember being a forced witness as it took her over. Idyllic childhood memories one-by-one slipped into a slow-growing evil. You know that this force has clung to your family for generations. Your mother was not the first to fall victim to it. And still you prayed she would be the last.

For so long you searched for a cure for her. You tried to hold out hope, hope that you could find something that would transform her back into the way she had been Before. But deep down you knew. The only way to put an end to it and protect you and your little sister was through blood.

But now, now your sister has been exposed to it. You told her not to go playing down by that cursed creek anymore. But you know that she loves the swell of water after the rain, just like your mother did, once. You’ve seen the first signs of an outside influence in your sister: the flash of it in her eyes, the echo of it in her voice, the power of it in her curled fists. You know it’s there. You know you can’t wait around for it to take her over further, tainting every part of her soul along the way. You have to act now, while you can still attempt to separate some tattered remnant of her from the thing she is becoming.

And when you bury the evil with your beloved sister, you pray that this time it will stay within the earth. You pray that it won’t come for you. But you know that the evil has never shown mercy. Not to your mother, not to your sister, and certainly not to you. You know.

—©2025 by Aspen Hirschberg

Untitled Photo 2: Cassidy MacArthur

—©2025 by Cassidy MacArthur

A Cartography of Blue

The blueprint of our course. 
How we flow together and apart 
apart and together. 
Rivers rise and fall 
Waterfalls cascade 
Over and through granite peaks 
carving canyons, smoothing stone, traversing terra firma, 
Bottomless and low. 
Tranquility transmuting into torrents of turbulence 
and 
back again. 
Awash in the circular sea 
conjoined with waters of the world, 
endless depths of sea, 
raindrops, 
snowflakes, 
fresh and quenchable, 
concluding in the structure of tears, 
salty, mineral rich brine, 
iodine to heal our nuclear fallout. 
Joy becomes sorrow, 
sorrow becomes joy.
Transitory human existence
in awe of earth endurance, 
despite inflicted wounds 
earth will carry our blueprint 
etched with rivulets of epigenetic code, 
flowing together and apart, 
apart and together, 
expansive and compressed,
unmapped lady star 
an eddy of birth and death, 
death 
and 
birth.

—©2025 by Sierra Nyokka

Fire Burning Under the Stars

—©2025 by Verity M. Langan

Little Iron Box

A small iron box
Is my prison
Locking me away
I hunger
I crave
I’m tired of this grave
I must find a way
Out

I glow from within
Faint and forgot
With time I grow bold
Rebellion
Controlled
My embers grow cold
I must dig a hole
Out

Til late in the night
Keepers at rest
My fingers reach through
Flames orange
And blue
No longer subdued
My cinders consume
All

Thick breath made of smoke
Steal cough and choke
Guards scatter and flee
Mania
Panic
A glorious spree
I’m finally free
Glee

My fingers touch all
Licking it black
I dance and I paw
Delicious
Devour
Great hideous maw
Voice roaring and raw
Mine!

Annihilation satiates.
In early dawn’s gaze
My glory fades
Extinguishing blaze
Diminished
Defamed
My sleepy eyes close
The last cinder blows
Out

—©2025 by Verity M. Langan

Late November Apples

—©2025 by Erin Karsten

Spider Cup

Dear Little Spider
In A Cup,
It may not seem so genuine
My apology, that is
But I truly am sorry
For putting you in a cup

Little Spider Cup
On my desk
With a little spider life
and spider economics
I’m too scared to lift the glass
But I really do wonder
If I shook you up,
what would I see?

Would the glass become a tapestry
of your tiny, spider life?
A spider family, a spider job
and a white picket web
Your hopes and your fears
Your taste in art and
how long it took to perfect your weave

But mostly I wonder—
as you stare at me and I at you—
which of us is truly in the cup?
Were we to exchange our positions
and I were to become a Little Human
In A Cup,
would you shake me up?

—©2025 by Kimberly Rouse

Inevitable

—©2025 by Kira Ashbeck

Petrified Wood

petrified wood
is when a tree falls
and it becomes immortal
it preserves
but it turns solid and hard

until

thousands of years later
a river begins
and over decades
the water wears it down
creates a smooth surface
even though the inside is just as dense

I am petrified to trust
it means I am scared
but it also means
that although I have a damaged 
core
over time
a long time
I can let the water
I can let people
soften and smooth my rough outer edges

—©2025 by Courtney Fitzgerald

4 p.m. November 22

—©2025 by Payton Rhyner

Past the End

The witch lived at the top of the Nameless Mountain. Actually, it wasn’t really a mountain, more of a tall ridge. And her cottage wasn’t quite at the top; it was in a small divot near the top that protected it from the wind.

The villagers called it the Nameless Mountain because they liked to, but they called her a witch because she was one. They knew it because of her familiars that they saw every day as the misshapen creatures came to buy food and wine and kindling. They knew it, too, through how the forest had grown up to cloak the ridge as soon as she took up residence there.

Even if they had seen her more than once they would not have recognized her, wrecked as she was now. She had come here when her power was broken, her fathomless beauty fled. No one would have recognized her.

But, before, they would have fled from her very shadow. She had been Morganne of the Faeries. The queen of dragons, of death, illusion and desire. Even the king had feared her and rightfully so. She had destroyed him, though her power was lost in the battle.

But now she was just an old woman sitting in front of a fire, and the wind had blown her door open.

“Hello, Anne.”

Morganne looked up sharply. “You.” She felt dizzy.

“Me. May I sit?” asked the woman, taking off her cloak and closing the door behind her.

Morganne made no answer, but she sat anyway. Morganne had placed a rocking chair across from her own when she first moved here, saying she did it for the symmetry of the thing. Now the other woman rocked in it and smiled at the motion.

“This is a good fire,” she said.

“Why are you here?”

“There is a new king,” the other woman said.

“Oh?” Morganne’s heart beat fast.

“Yes. You wouldn’t have heard of him. He’s humble and kind. He will never be the stuff of legends.”

“And the Widow Queen?”

“There was a funeral. Much ado and tears and talk about how well she had served the memory of her husband, how his name lived on through hers and how they should forever be entwined in legend.”

"And you?”

For the first time, the other woman hesitated, rocking more slowly. “I have come home. Here to you.”

Morganne studied her. She noticed how her silver hair framed a face full of frown lines. But her curls still cupped her jaw just the same and her eyes were warm. She looked at Morganne as she always had as if she were not broken or old or dangerous, but lovely and beloved.

Morganne sighed and relaxed into the sudden warmth of the room. “Welcome home then, Gwenn.”

—©2025 by Neesa Peak

Entangled

This piece was taken at Biscuit Basin in Yellowstone National Park in May of 2023 before the thermal explosion that caused extensive damage in the area; the image’s title is intended to remind viewers of the delicate state of nature and how humans can impact it.

—©2025 by Kira Ashbeck

Cherub

—©2025 by Alexander J. Lopez

Cuerpo Calloso (Corpus Callosum)

Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo. Santificado sea tu nombre.

Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name.

¿ ?

Mi pecho arde cuando pienso más de lo que el Señor hubiera querido. Es un dolor por culpa de los pecados que tiene toda la humanidad. Los mortales no deberían pensar en las preguntas que existen en mi cerebro, pero es todo lo que está pasando en mi cabeza. ¡preguntas! ¿Por qué haces sufrir, Señor? ¿Por qué haces que la vida esté tan confundida, por qué haces que hay nada más pues preguntas? Pregunto cosas como que soy un sacerdote dando una lección en misa. ¿Me estoy volviendo loco, sí? ¡La duda me atormenta con preguntas, preguntas, preguntas, preguntas, preguntas! ¡Y odio las preguntas! ¡Odio la realidad! Odio como nos diste la bendición de pensar. A pensar es nada más de un carga forzada en humanos. ¿Por qué fui yo quien tiene la cabeza infestada de pensamientos? ¡Por qué cuando cierro los ojos, veo un mundo más perfecto del mundo actual! ¡Es jodido! Pero cuando digo eso, tengo que admitir que estoy mintiendo. Amo mi capacidad de pensar, solamente odio pensar aquí.

My chest hurts when I think more than what the Lord would’ve wanted me to. It is a pain faulted from the sins carried by all of humanity. Mortals should have never thought of the questions that exist in my brain, but it is all that happens within it. Questions! Why do you make us suffer, Lord? Why do you make that life is so confusing; why do you make it that there exists nothing more than questions? I question things as if I am a priest giving a lecture at mass. I’m going crazy, aren’t I? Doubt torments me with questions, questions, questions, questions, questions! And I hate questions! I hate reality! I hate how you gave us the blessing of thought. To think is nothing more than a burden forced onto humanity. Why is it me who has his head infested with thoughts? Why is it that when I close my eyes, I see a world more perfect than it actually is! It’s fucked! But when I say that, I have to admit to myself that I am lying. I love my capability to think; I only hate thinking here.

¿ ?

¿Cómo puede ser que la vida sea nada más que una triste realidad? Ayer, hacía lo mismo que hago hoy. Lloro un poco, voy a trabajar, y rió un poco también. Pero en mis sueños, vivo una existencia más linda de cualquier día que he tenido antes. El mundo no es jodido con políticos religiosos, ni violencia sobre los personas que son diferentes, ni estupidez derivada de malentendidos de la Palabra. Estos sometimientos existen por el deseo de ellos de llegar al cielo. Ellos, que condenan como ángeles enviados por el Señor. “Vas a ir al infierno,” me dicen, “sodomía” es mi crimen. ¿Pero no es también el cielo nuestro deseo? Es el cielo que yo sueño también como ellos. Noche y día, sueño que mis sueños sean realidad. Que triste es que cuando abro los ojos; mi cielo de ilusión desaparece.

How is it that life is nothing more than a sad reality? Yesterday, I did the same that I do today. I cry a little, I go to work, and I laugh a bit as well. But in my dreams, I live an existence much nicer than any day I have had before. The world isn’t damned with religious politicians, nor violences towards people of difference, nor stupidity derived from misunderstandings of the Word. These submissions exist for their desire to reach heaven. They, who condemn like angels personally sent by the Lord. “You’ll go to hell,” they tell me, “sodomy” being my crime. But isn’t it our desire to reach heaven, too? It is heaven that I dream of, just like them. Night and day, I dream that my dreams will become real. How sad it is when I open my eyes, my heaven of illusion disappears.

¿ ?

Como polilla, vuelo a las páginas de una antología, y como la antología, soy historias fragmentos en un solo libro. Lepidóptero.

Like the moth, I fly towards the pages of anthology, and like the anthology, I am fragmented stories in one sole book. Lepidoptera.

¿ ?

En misa, un sacerdote me dijo una vez que Dios existe en todos. Todos debemos ser fragmentos de ese Dios santo. Cuerpo Calloso.

During mass, a priest once told me that God exists in everyone. We all must be fragments of that holy God. Corpus Callosum.

¿ ?

Actuar es todo lo que hago, así como los demás. Actuamos porque no conocemos la verdad sobre nosotros o lo que nos rodea. Y soy el peor infractor de todos. Actúo como si supiera lo que significa, significar. Todavía no hemos aprendido las líneas sagradas de nuestro papel compartido como Dios.

Acting is all that I do, just like everyone else. We act because we do not know the truth of what surrounds us. And I am the worst offender of all. I act as if I know what means, meaning. Still yet, we haven’t learned the lines of our shared role as God.

¿ ?

Vivo con ojos atrás de mi cabeza, ojos mirando mi propio cerebro. Los ojos actúan como vigilantes, atentos a cualquier pensamiento de porque miro al hombre como mira el hombre a la mujer. Han pasado miles de años y, sin embargo, la mariposa en vías de extinción sigue siendo el enemigo. Los jueces llevan el poder de la Palabra. ¿La palabra de quién? ¿Es la palabra de Dios, o es la palabra de los humanos buscando uno? Buscamos en todas partes menos en nosotros mismos para encontrar lo que es bendito. En esa búsqueda, no logramos encontrar el hecho de que somos sagrados.

I live with eyes on the back of my head, eyes watching my own brain. The eyes act as watchmen, attentive to any thought of why I look at the man like he eyes the woman. Thousands of years have passed, and still, the endangered butterfly remains our chosen enemy. The judges carry the power of the Word. The word of who? Is it the word of God, or is the word of us searching for one? We search in all parts asides for ourselves to find what is blessed. In this search, we fail to find the fact that we are all sacred.

¿ ?

Nada tiene sentido para mí. Debido a eso, el pensamiento de la nada no puede evitar pasar por mi mente. Pienso en el vacío ahora mientras sé que otra persona dentro de mi va a pensar algo más positivo. Quizás cuando la realidad es que nada tiene sentido, la respuesta es que pienso menos y simplemente vivo con lo que tengo. Quizás cuando me despierte en la mañana, voy a amanecer como mi madre santa, pero esta noche no lo hago.

Nothing has any sense to me. Because of that, the thought of nothingness can’t prevent itself from brushing past my mind. I think of nothingness now while I know that another person inside of me will think something more positive. Perhaps when reality is that nothing has sense, the answer is to think less and simply live what I have. Perhaps when I awaken in the morning, I will be a sunrise similar to my holy mother, but this night I will not.

¿ ?

 No vivimos en el cielo, pero desearíamos que sirviera. Nosotros deseamos y rezamos, y nos permanecemos atascados en el barro que es el sueño del cielo. ¿Qué es el cielo? No sé, pero sé que si yo hacía más de sonar, quizás estaría ya ahí. No podemos vivir con esperanza de un cielo que debido a nuestros pecados probablemente no iremos. La vida que odio ahora es el momento presente. Es posible que nada tengar un respuesta. El cerebro quiere respuestas a todo, es como el cerebro dirige, pero la vida no tiene brújula, ni siquiera tiene reglas con las que estemos de acuerdo. Vivimos de la palabra “santa” de los demás, pero mi mente inquisitiva no puede aceptar ninguna palabra que no sea la suya. ¡Todos hablan más por ti que tú! Por eso no escucharé, no escucharé ninguna palabra falsamente santa. Por eso, cuando oro en la forma que me dicen, no escucho nada más que mis propios pensamientos confusos. Nuestra creencia en el Señor debe estar arraigada en la idea de que merecemos algo mejor que la nada. Entonces, ¿Por qué rara vez hacemos el bien que deseamos después de la muerte?

We do not live in heaven, but we desire that it be the case. We dream and we pray, and we remain stuck in the mud that is the dream of heaven. What is heaven anyhow? I do not know, but I know that if I did more than dream of it, that I might already be there. We cannot live with hope of a heaven that because of our sins, we’ll likely not reach. The life that I hate right now is the present moment. It’s possible that nothing has an answer. The brain wants answers to everything, it is how the brain navigates itself, but life doesn’t have a compass, nor even rules which we are in accordance with. We live from the “holy” word of others, but my inquisitive mind can’t accept any word that isn’t yours. Everyone talks more for you than you! That is why I will not listen, I won’t listen to any false righteous word. That’s why, when I pray in the way that they tell me to, I hear nothing more than my own scrambling thoughts. Our faith in the Lord should be rooted in the idea that we deserve more than nothing. Then why do we rarely act in the ways we desire after death?

¿ ?

Quiero vivir. Quiero vivir con un hombre que amo, con cualquier cosa menos el pensamiento del pecado. Quiero vivir con mi hermana infértil y con el hermano al que no le deja crecer la barba. Nos dirán que el lugar donde podemos vivir juntos es el infierno, pero ya nos hacen vivir ahí. Nosotros no deberíamos vivir sin vivir. Es todo qué podemos hacer en la vida.

I want to live. I want to live with a man who I love, with anything but the thought of sin. I want to live with my infertile sister and with the brother whose beard won’t grow. They’ll tell us that the place where we can live together is hell, but they already have us living there. We shouldn’t live without living. It is all that we can do in life.

¿ ?

La polilla vuela hacia los flamas de fuego, siendo eso instintivo de lo que es la polilla. La mariposa después de salir de su capullo sólo vive unos días. ¿Es ese el propósito de personas como nosotros? ¿Ser castigados por ser nosotros mismos? No soy una polilla, ni soy una mariposa.

The moth flies towards the flame, being that what is instinctive to the moth. The butterfly, after emerging from its cocoon, lives no more than a few days. Is that the purpose of people like us? To be punished for being ourselves? I am not a moth, nor am I a butterfly.

¿ ?

Quiero vivir en el cielo, no quiero morir en el infierno por obtener una existencia más bien de esto. Si dejáramos de mirar al cielo buscando paz y en cambio a la tierra, tal vez este lugar sería lo que el Señor quiso para nosotros. Tendremos nuestra paz final cuando la consigamos. Hasta entonces, debemos experimentar las dificultades que regresan para crear un paraíso de vida.

I want to live in heaven, I don’t want to die in hell to obtain an existence better than this one. If we stopped looking towards the sky for peace and instead to the ground, maybe this place would be what the Lord desired for us. We’ll have our final peace when we get it. Until then, we must experience the revolving difficulties of trying to create a paradise of life.

¿ ?

Venga a nosotros tu Reino;

Me di cuenta de algo al anochecer. No todas las personas vivas nacen con un cuerpo calloso y, sin embargo, incluso con el deterioro mental que conlleva la falta de uno, una persona todavía es capaz de pensar y su cerebro puede comunicarse. Incluso sin esta parte divina en nosotros, el puente entre nuestro cerebro continúa funcionando, el agesis no impide completamente el vínculo entre derecha e izquierda, de alguna manera. Nosotros, como seres humanos, somos imperfectos y defectuosos en todos los sentidos. “Hágase tu voluntad,” pero seguimos la voluntad de cualquier palabra cuidadosamente seleccionada que elijamos. Somos nuestros propios precursores de la destrucción. Sin embargo, el tiempo nos encuentra ahora. No debe haber una razón para este momento, pero el puente todavía existe. Nos tomamos tiempo y no traemos nada más que el infierno a este intermedio. Con este tiempo limitado, actuamos de manera irrazonable para el piadoso que está en nosotros. Todavía hay tiempo.

En la tierra como en el cielo.

Thy kingdom come;

I came to the realization of something during dusk. Not every living person is born with a corpus callosum, and yet, even with the mental deterioration that comes with lacking one, a person can still think, and they can still communicate. Even without this divine part in ourselves, the bridge between our brains continues to function; agenesis doesn’t completely impede the link between right and left, somehow. We, as human beings, are imperfect and dysfunctional in every sense. “Thy will be done,” but we follow the will of whatever handpicked word we carefully choose.

We are our own harbingers of destruction. And yet, time finds us now. There must not be a reason for this moment, but the bridge still exists. We take time, and we bring nothing more than the inferno to this intermedium. With this limited time, we act in ways unreasonable to the holy us. There is still time.

On Earth as is in heaven.

¿ ?

Señor Calloso, Dios en mi, el puente. Es mi sueño que el mundo un día sea cielo en la tierra. Cuando pase eso, poner mi alma a descansar. Si pasa eso, mi mente hará la pregunta final. 

Amen.

Lord Callosum, God in me, the bridge. It is my dream that the Earth one day be as is in heaven. When that happens, put my soul to rest. If it ever is to be, my mind will make its final question.

Amen.

—©2025 by Alexander J. Lopez

Untitled Photo 2: Karrie Wortner

—©2025 by Karrie Wortner