by Lynn Robchinsky ✿

It was around 11:30 pm and still warm as hell outside. We were sitting on my roof and gazing at what could barely be identified as the stars. Our heads were spinning, and we were both a bit delirious, but we didn’t care. The air smelt of honey and vanilla.

by Denada Kuka ✿

I

I adored the darkness out of you,

I

I saw you for who you could be and not who you were,

I gave you my world to find myself no place in yours.

by Holly J Cockburn ✿

i am a small thing and

filled with forgiveness

humbled by the

passing of time and

days spent

in beautiful places

by Imogen Kathleen ✿

I am the space between stars

and the silence between heartbeats.

Find me where the darkness

meets the dazzling dawn.

by Imogen Beaumont ✿

You pocket a pool of quartz,

smooth to the touch,

tumbling into the seams.

That hand touches mine

in a fleeting graze. Fate.

by Izzie Nadine ✿

sometimes i’m scared of my own mind

and like to pretend that my thoughts aren’t there -

like a child afraid of monsters under the bed

i try not to stray into that darkness

and keep the box to my soul firmly locked

by Emmy Anderson Large ✿

A phrase that has come to turn many a stomach,

The phrase seems well-meaning at first.

So many intentions can fool with their surface,

The poison just bubbling beneath.

by Lauren Alice Sharp ❀

I take myself away from the party. My family’s murmured voices continue from the living room, they don’t mind that I’ve slipped away. In the darkness of my room, the rain against the window seems louder and under my door warm light glows from the landing.

by Lauren Alice Sharp ❀

Sometimes I think about the places I’ve been

when they’re empty

just to feel the discomfort

of knowing the world is exists where I am not.

The old building we broke into

felt so real, so ours,

although it was crumbling.

by Lauren Alice Sharp ❀

I walked miles that day

for what, I couldn’t tell you

except all I knew was I had to get away.

What was there to run from?

Nothing that I could see,

just questions and fears and voices.

by Chloe Bayliss ❀

The scale,

tipped towards too little,

not too much or the right amount,

The equilibrium is unreachable,

by Chloe Hanks ❀

dressed in their foliage, decadently slipping into their final phase of thirst next to the typewriter, I’d doubt you even existed. The futile burst of colour is beginning to dull, like it matters anyway, the shades you picked; the significance of it.

by Esther Gonzales ❀

the wind

brushes softly

through the trees

a canopy of color

above me

by Grace McNicholas ❀

your smile, subtle, pure, unknowing,

plants a little flower in the garden

in my romanticising mind,

by Aisling King ❀

I will love you even when I’m no longer.

Even as my flesh begins to fade, the memory of your fingerprints will dance like fire on my skin.

No longer can words be spoken from my lips, but my mouth will always remember the taste of your lips

on mine.

by Lauren Alice Sharp ❀

My ordinary life is littered with precious moments

and I could collect them,

they would shine on a screen

together they’d prove I’m something

with the everyday left out.

by Lauren Alice Sharp ❀

I don’t like myself at my most poetic

naked, curled like an insect in the open

I don’t like myself pouring the same poem

over the same paper

by Lauren Alice Sharp ❀

I arrive four hours early, and I don’t know this part of London, but a few people are sat by the entrance already queueing for the concert. I join them, why not, and before long we’re talking: about our favourite songs, how long it took us to get here, how excited we are. I’ve brought snacks and share them with my new friends, they hold my place in the line when I go to get some water and the hours fly past.

by Grace McNicholas ❀

Hundreds of years

Of hundreds

Of stories

Each one narrating

A unique drawing of our

world

by Lauren Alice Sharp ❀

In the black box theatre

the dancers move like clockwork

immaculate tension flows through their bodies

from the arches of their en pointe feet,

to the muscles in their necks.