Author: Alye Ancianis
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homecoming
When it’s your land yours the soil recognizes your blood, welcomes you home in full bloom, she smiles down on you in the form of crisp rain and gentle sunbeams because she knows you won’t hurt her When it’s your house home you know which stairs creak the way a pianist knows scales, can create
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I did so many drugs in so many parking lots
They met me in space time, where lightning struck the marble arch and we were linking red monkeys, from top bunk to bottom. i dyed my sheets with honeysuckle and cried about everything. one misstep and slip right off the cliffs edge we were t n a a u i o t o n g
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Self Portrait of Thirteen
I was orange, yellow, redforking out of a thick brown body that promised to let me go In summertime I grew green malachite and peridotarms reaching with little help I stretched to reachthe snowflake obsidian skywho whispered its misty music in my ear I worked with the wind Fighting for fluorite freedomdistorted fingers anchoring me
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Demon
Fuck! Stupid ant! I’ve been bitten. Talk about gaslighting. Tiny creature of trickery. You think it’s nothing, but god does it itch. Hydrocortisone stat! It’s not enough! Tylenol! Ice! Whatever. Bed time. Don’t let the bed bugs bite!
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Steady Breathing
I found peace within your steady breathing, Embodying the wind itself. Found shelter from the heat and the rain Under a vibrant tree canopy. But I realized I missed the rain, And the feeling of the sun on my skin. The leaves blocked out the silver moon, And silenced its ticking, Leaving Earth uncomfortably quiet.
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Don’t Forget to Remember
Red threadtied around an index finger; a reminder, a reasonto remember.“Don’t let me forget.” How could I forget someone like you?Your smile isa blinding light. Your touch is soft silk.Don’t let me forget. A red circle on a calendar slowly creeps closer as a dayof little significance.Or is it?Don’t let me forget. Forget me notbut
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Why do I see only rotting corpses?
Your face is a tomb, burying all those feelings underground, it seems until you friended me.Then, your secrets leaked straight out, skeleton’s fingers breaking the birch wood, and snaking out to bite me.Why do you infect me with your problems?I’ve your picture in my mind, but now the glass broke. The shards cut my skin,spreading
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Home
Being alone always frightened me as a kid. When you’re little, you should be playing around, finding things you’re good at. I learned how to act when I found that shapeshifting parts of me to please others made me more favorable as a friend. People wanted to be around me if I mirrored them instead
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Breathless
Six year-old Max leaned on his elbow and gazed out the window of a truck driving alone on a forest road. Tree trunks whizzed by in pulsing blurs, which made his head sleepy. He peeked through the canopies to the looming waves of sea-blue mountains, rolling over a boundless carpet of green. Max’s father, Tom,
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As The CD Skips
There’s not much that can be said about my father, both for the fact that he was a simple man and that he’s been dead for twelve years. Nobody at this wake knew James, the man he became after he died, and since neither my sister nor mother bothered to show up, that would never