winter can usually be found wherever Leya is = another fun fact ~Leya Winter you just have a whole cinematic universe in your head ~Wist winter is the only person who would survive the machine uprising ~Europa
Hi friends! The signup deadline has passed, and I'll be sending out PMs with the lines you'll be working with tomorrow evening. Please be sure to send me 2-4 lines of poetry by 04/03/2026 21:00 GMT if you haven't already! I'm super excited to see how these will turn out!
I'm still waiting for a few first lines, so I'm going to extend the deadline another day - no worries since we have all April! Thank you to everyone who has sent in theirs!
Woot woot, I sent out PMs with the line you'll be working with! Please be sure to continue the poem with 3-4 lines and send that over to me whenever you're finished. I'm aiming to push the deadline back to 04/12/2026 21:00 GMT since I was late to send this first round out.
Please be sure to reach out with any questions or concerns as well!
Second round lines have been sent out! Please continue your poem with 3-4 lines of poetry and reply to my PM whenever you're finished! The deadline will be 04/19/2026 21:00 GMT to give us a week to have everything for this round wrapped up - great poems so far, everyone!
So sorry for the delay, everyone! Some behind-the-scenes events were out of my control, but I've sent out our final round lines. I'd like to have all poems wrapped up by 04/30/2026 21:00 GMT - please be sure to write 3-4 lines of poetry for our final round!
Friends, this may be belated, but I am so happy to share with you all our final poems from this activity! We had a total of EIGHTEEN POEMS - you should be incredibly proud of yourselves and your fellow poets!
my love moves slow, stubborn, like the sun dragging its heels through April. or the moon, hovering just above the horizon, longing for sleep yet still needed in the firmament. celestial bodies receive no overtime pay.
call me cosmic driftwood, something clinging to the belly of a dead comet as it swings by: this debt will not be settled in this life or the next. the prince left flowers at his father's tomb, when he came the next day they had wilted too fast.
This is the type of storm that make even the birds breathless - caught up in stirring against hurricanes and straining to hold the sky this is the storm we feel in our bones a week before the rain's here. one half of a red cross logo, boarded windows -- chipboard, corrugation, MDF; & green is grass in the lower foreground: arrows, words, people. Sometimes I water plants and try to envision a world without any of the three. My mind goes blank.
it is sunset in the city you love: you turn west to find everything painted as desperate and final as the dim haze of a yellow traffic signal. or eyes in the dark, from a creature I've never seen in daylight. I'm not sure if I should slow down or speed up on these roads that I’ve been lost too often, and I wonder if I could miss an exit once again. A Cadillac slows down for a grand charade, but surely my gas pedal disagrees. i round the loop a couple thousand times see the ins and outs, life passing by ending back where i started, seems there's nothing left for me.
It's obvious you're too good to be true, but I'm addicted to this fever high feeling. The ache when you'll finally walk away Is sure to be my descent into madness, dragging me down with acrylic, sparkling nails and a vengeance dripping with saliva, like the animals I pass on the side of a stretch of country road.
I too long for a different path, one I can take step by step forwards through the sandy dirt, towards the edge of old and new and hope. (is hope the thing with feathers, or are those birds? no matter. neither is in my reach.) i stand, steadfast, on the edge of each and every ledge.
Oh gentle hurricane, listen to my call I’m feeling so homesick, do take me home; all this talk of forgetting came cautiously from around the corner & instated in me longing & complication.
But no one longs for complications. We pray for abundance, peace, simplicity. And yet a life simple, easy, free of longing— Would that be worth living at all? sealed in a polaroid where no one moves, a suitcase filled with slices of citrus -- like trying to measure infinity in teaspoons.
This is the place that we're running to, these are the train tracks we're building, at every station a bed of flowers is for birds to sing and to swing among vines of wintercreeper, for moving hair out of your eyes while we string ourselves into knots. Like the pirates in Our Flag Means Death, we sail like it means something, like tying ourselves up isn't the same as tying ourselves down. But we will fold our arms and necks and hearts into paper-airplanes, and lean into the sky until the wind catches us again, we will climb every tree until these ancient roots start to break, we will latch feathers to our veins, and one day - we will claim the sun.
The full moon is a working moon but tonight, I saw her waking from her bed silver limbs and silver hair askew yet still pristine, staring feels obscene. the longer my eyes linger, i feel silver to a tee.
but is the clarity not fleeting? i fear my insight might be a mortal mirage is it not indeed the calm before a storm? but i shall embrace it nevertheless before it all goes away, i'll live it. i have to tell myself that my effort every day is deserved, even when i waste my energy rethinking conversations, i still have earned my rest.
A gentle orange glow engulfs this space, sweet softness and fragrant smelling, like biting into a peach: all fuzz and sensitive taste. I will eat every dandelion whole, wishes and all, until my breath tastes like summer and even the sun knows the way our names rhyme. She will sing them to the moon when she is bored from her rooftop on restless nights, but her words don’t seem to carry through the warm hum of summer.
I leapt, shouted, full of deafening joy until September came, and I reverted to my cicada shell for the dull seasons ahead.
In a maze of budding blooms, fuchsia, cherry, crimson, maroon, but I dream in shades of blue: cobalt, sapphire, ocean, aquamarine cities undead under the water's surface a window blinking awake. blue sky reflected in its contented gaze clouds of happiness fluffed, drifting calmly like all the world could smile. we're still connected, even as metal covered in copper, covered in your skin and sweat.
someone unbuttons the horizon and all the small hours spill out; i drink their blue static and call it tomorrow. but they never respond to my voicemails about how the eggshell tiles on my floor are spinning so fast i’m scared i’ll shatter. oh, please pick up. i have a dire question. do you know that i am haunted by it all? a past life of regrets: the head & the heart in an endless power struggle. the drumming through the arteries, the lightning through the spine. conflict binds us together and apart.
the room where you talked on and on and I silently listened now feels dead like a band that left without applause. they smile until the curtains close and then their faces fall, their voices devolving into an argument over who messed it up this time, who broke the show beyond repair?
who awoke, one glow beyond nowhere? (nowhere is my start and my destination and my everywhere in-between. the lack fills me like helium buoys a balloon.) up and up I go; flying into the void of space much like Icarus, my fate is long doomed bound to burst; yet I'm scared of the fall.
they say the eyes are the windows to the soul so i guess you had your shutters closed or maybe your soul had moved houses long ago leaving nothing but an empty ho[m|l]e, leaving gray eyes vacant and stagnant - shadows bleed into a pool of dark and this ground does not sink or creak.
i will yield no ground when the barricades fall. i've long since abandoned the sword for the pen, despite what anyone might tell you. if i am a warrior, i am the kind who had to learn how to surrender long after it was clear i'd chosen the wrong side.
Like stars passing in the daytime, they never seemed to see us dazzle even when we stood beneath the streetlamps at night - deliberate, bright as crimson cherries - waiting for someone to call us luminous. a star's light leaves a mark thousands of years after it's gone and you won't forget us; i promise you when the night dims and every light in this galaxy has lost its glow we will still be here; radiant and deathless. and our souls echo some forgotten melody, piercingly ancient, strangely grounded, forever unmoving, or perhaps running to a greater light, to crystalline bright fragments
you feel like the sun, you feel like warm water in kiddie pools & grass on bare feet, messy, muddy, just like the color of your eyes, gloomy, just like the exhale every five seconds, weary, just like the tats on your back, blue, just like my faith in you at once brilliant azure on sparkling sand and fathomless navy in Mariana's Trench its depth unending, layered like a cake. there is no place I would not follow. I fear I may soon have to field the proffered inquiries of angels lobbying for a pet heaven. I fear that fear is just something we say.
i thought our love was perfect, a sunny day in may. but now i see it was deceptive, cold, a sunny day in january, but now that sunshine is gone, leaving only faint traces of memories vanished whispers of light have left us in darkness.
yet i still chase am i faulty? am i screaming? where do i draw the line to begin focusing on me.
pain has never felt so positive, the other side has never seemed so beautiful, you took my feist away resiliency... it brought me to the other side, which is the most you can ask of a sinking ship, at least once you've turned even the waves against you. i imagine making an island of myself again here, stranded, far from human connection -- I reach out my hand to lace with yours & barely graze your fingertips. I braid flowers into my hair and you say bees follow the scent of pollen like you trail after my perfume.
the polka dots in boundless space keep on measuring how they live without each other, distance stretching wide between both of them time lingers infinitely in an hourglass for all eternity but you shall fail terribly, should you try to measure their love even against the greatest treasures on a feeble scale. we see the gold sparkle in fragment in the wind, like fireflies in between each corner twinkling, shining infinitely in tiny space. i find all the good things etched on the surface of your skin; you are worth enough tears to flood the nile.
these branches ache for the return of life; the weight of existence, of being, is happiness. they cannot bear dry, weightless solitude. that’s what they say at least, and apparently I’m the reason why, but really, they don’t understand silence. they don't understand my harmony, my peace, my what it means to be the only one in the world. that’s what he told you, anyway, but you didn’t believe him. you’re too old now to still believe yhat anything is truly unique.
Once again, this was such an incredible experience to run, and I am in awe of the talent that I saw this April! I hope that everyone enjoyed this event, and I especially can't wait to see how these poems are received!
In a shadow there is the blessing of a shadow. — Kuki Shūzō
