A place to write your heart out. Anonymous submissions shared each month from our community for you to read.
It doesn’t have to make sense. Just write what you feel.
We all have courage and insecurities. Great hopes and even greater fears. Memories and moments that shape us.
Moments we let slip away.
This is a place to write about it.
Inspired by my friend Kyla at Pure Nowhere :)
April 2025
MARCH 2025
•
MARCH 2025 •
Look at yourself in the mirror.
What do you see?
Last words.
Eyes closed.
Fingers nestled above my collar bone.
I can’t sleep and
nothing stays the same.
My thumb is at the base of my throat,
checking for certainty,
in a bleak future,
that it’s not over yet.
I used to dream of sinking
to the bottom of the ocean and
burying my soul in the dirt,
but still,
my heart wills life into a body
that keeps burning up too soon.
It seems so absurd now —
how desperately I’ve tried to
scrape off skin
that only knows regrowth.
Feeding delusions
to a starving body
in place of calories.
For a long time
I’ve been coated in resentment
that did nothing except
prolong bearing witness
to my own reflection.
I’m back in the gurney somehow
and I changed my mind
I don’t want to be here anymore
but we can’t escape
the consequences of our choices.
My body has revolted against me now.
Forced me to look at
the lines in my cheeks
that have deepened
from a decade spent
learning to abandon myself.
I’ve decided to begin daring
to care for my body,
in the ways I should have,
especially here,
at the ending of things.
39 beats per minute:
a rare, undying loyalty,
in this strange
and beautiful world.
I hope I get to stay.
But if I must go,
then I will do so with a smile
for this life of mine.
Of ours.
- entry 4: last words in my journal before
a third surgery that never went through.
JANUARY 2025
•
JANUARY 2025 •
Where does your pain live? What soothes it? What does it taste like?
I always turn the lock.
Heavy handed on the porcelain and
I look different from the stories I tell myself.
Brutal honesty is hard to come by.
And the years I’ve spent holding myself underwater
are catching up with me now.
I wanna see what it looks like.
The skin that doesn’t know how to repair itself.
The fatigue under my eyes.
I need to know it was real.
Isolation is a poison.
Killing the host slowly.
Crushing dissent,
disarming,
unspeakable,
incorruptible.
I was naive for giving it a home.
For letting it leech the soul from my body.
For thinking, somehow, after everything,
I wouldn’t be so fucking alone.
I’ve been looking in the mirror lately,
where my fears become tangible.
When we are face to face.
I only look for long enough
when I’m high.
When my defenses crumble.
It’s hard to throw your life away
without guilt,
or swollen cheeks.
But the walls are beginning to
break down,
from neglect,
and carelessness.
From survival.
I think often of
the ways in which I’m not good enough.
The words with which I set myself on fire.
The poison that is killing me.
The poison that is the cure.
I look you in the eyes and you are crying.
- Stef ♡︎
DECEMBER 2024
•
DECEMBER 2024 •
Steffan entry 2 ♡︎
What part of yourself did you lose this year? What did you find?
Everyone says, “I’m here for you”
But I don’t think we really understand what that means.
My mom thinks laughter is the key to happiness.
Maybe she’s right.
But now I only laugh when I’m scavenging for comfort.
My friends tell me I just need to stay positive
But I don’t say anything while I’m in pain.
While my doctors are lost for words.
While my aneurysm goes unchecked,
While my body becomes irreparable.
I comfort medical professionals while they tell me to “hang in there.”
I have a good attitude while I have a stroke,
While I lose my vision,
While I make peace with death.
I don’t say anything when their surgeries fail.
When my surgeons tell me I might be better suited for a desk job,
I watch myself become disabled,
I let go of things that used to make me happy.
I stay positive while they talk to me of amputation,
Of losing control over my entire body.
And lately I’ve been contemplating my sanity,
While they deny my insurance,
While my insurance denies my claim,
While I receive a new bill,
While Gaza burns,
And my blood thinners aren’t enough to stop the clotting in my arm,
But I’m out of network anyways.
And it seems all I’ve been doing is staying positive, but
I’m exhausted from having my heart prodded and stabbed as if it were invincible.
And I know I’m not the only one,
But it’s so fucking lonely
In my room,
In the gurney
In the OR
Hallucinating off the oxy
On the bathroom floor,
At a party surrounded by all of my friends.
And I’m sorry that I’m not the same anymore.
That I don’t laugh how I used to.
I guess you could say I haven’t been feeling like myself lately.
