Untitled so shove your crystal ball bury it at moonlight vague we never claimed to understand the shallow water the sand in your memory I rise up unheroic the best second memory she combs her hair blue and says she understands Untitled goodbye sweet word against the light spoken at the end with a fall in mind and if we believe in nothing more beautiful…

i. i think that often the most shocking specifics are trotted out like show ponies, as if to say– i am not like you. i will never be like you. i am insane and you are safe. but who knows. maybe we are the same. maybe no matter where you go or what you do, you have a desperate desire to be swallowed up by death.

backyard footballwe used to run head first at each other so thank God for helmets otherwise I’m not sure we would have made itpast adolescence with our masculine fervorto break each other’s necks. until third gradewe were old enough to fight then defendourselves against stereotypical boyhood aggression,too young to incur any permanent damage,trained to…

It’s harderto love yourself at 6 am, eyes hazywith sleep. even harder when you wantnothing more than to bitedown hard into flesh– your own flesh.it’s harder when you get a sympathetic nodand it’s not enough, it was never enough, andyou think how you can bust into a throat andsteal the words hiding there.

I’m Trying to UnderstandI’m trying to understand depressionbut why do I feel like it’s a death sentence—like a stage-four diagnosis:“suicidal ideation,”and why does my heart drop from my chestinto my lower intestine, beating relentlessly in too small a spaceevery time I don’t know where she isor when she’s home alone and won’t answer my texts, …

Weed I smoked weed and had a panic attack and when it wore off I did it again and then again and then consciousness splintered again and time wasn’t real, I wasn’t real.It’s terrible, the way I terrify myselfjust to feel different from how I normally do.Now I’m under it again—high, terribly.My fingers curled and trembling…

How are you? I mean, how broken are you? Are you only scarred? In fragments? shattered? Cracked vase. A mirror hit against stone. We are all broken things, perhaps, With ranging degrees of fall. How are you holding? I mean, are you neck-deep into drowning? Are you choking or you are floating well? Don't look away, you should answer. Wait, are you losing breath?

I haven’t been to the sea in four years, And I feel nature’s fragments dying With my skin cells. I miss being Partly sand, and partly water From my hair strands to my follicles. I miss the mixology of my sweat And the salt in Poseidon’s bathtub. Perhaps, the music needs the soul Of my eardrums in the wind’s swooshes…

There is a sway inside me sometimes. A vibration that makes me look around startled. I wonder if it was just a large truck passing by? Sometimes it's a consistent shake and I look to the chandelier to see if it is swinging even if ever so slightly to make sense of how I feel. Maybe an earthquake I say to myself.

We played a game called Suicide, never agreeing on rules due to a reluctance to write them down. On the gameboard, a series of paths branched off the edges, over the cliff. The dice, of course, were loaded. She’d been thinking about suicide so long that its hair turned white. Her own hair, red as blood, wild, rushing. Suicide or birth control—she was always prepared.

i peeled the cut back until it bled and exposed broken bone; until it looked like a cat’s eye on a friday, unblinking as she lit a second bitter match; until the blood would soak through a bandaid; until it smiled like a woman in a sexy dress in the frozen food aisle, picking up bags of melted peas; until it bled out like a heavy period; grinned like an old wood cane slumped by a night table after a long walk in the park; until advil wasn’t enough to reduce my fever; until i squealed like an adult after buying themself a milk chocolate bar from the gas station; until it puckered like cheeks full of acidic green peaches; until the wrinkly bumper was an afterthought; until the blurry cars swerved left and returned to the double yellow line; until no one noticed me lying in the nighttime grass like another fully-lit cigarette.

Plunged already too deep into the end times, he’s still a romantic. He brought home a peace lily that yields ardently to overwatering. I wait for it to flower, waiting beats the spiral. Grasshoppers predate grass and still haven’t achieved complete metamorphosis, so no, I don’t believe the man who achieved enlightenment after cleaning up an oil spill. They burn fresh spills in situ, meaning “original place.” A certain…

Anxiety freezes bloodto near absolute zeroin searing blizzardsof frantic tremblingcreating fresh scarswith each panic,exploding to bitsevery cry of logicevery wail of reasoninto a fiery cloud of uniquely intensedrama of the souldisguised as fear,trapped in a loopof terminal terrorwith no exitfrom its portable hellbeside some rumor…

spilled from their canisterinto the kitchen sinkthe building blocks of matterfloat counterclockwiseeverything flattens into a low graphdomestic vortexwhere a crab nebula drownscalculation on a matchbookdelivers a dismal minus of rainthe dry calcium sky won’t releasenothing to see in the kitchenpull up another cat rescuevideo delights the mercifuleverything flattens into a low graph…

A pastor in his early twenties. The Bible spread on a podium. Hallelujah! Roaring cheers. Music and swaying bodies all around. What are they doing? Going to the altar for healing, Mom says. Some of…

I punish myself for not staying the same. Not being the person I used to be. Does a tree during winter punish itself for losing its leaves? Does an iceberg in summer punish itself for turning to wa…

Sometimes, i wake up relaxedthere’s no pain or rush to think, actacknowledged dreams lie dissolved on such days and momentsclear as azure skyanswers pierce the heart of questionsi ask myself before…

Buy The Beast in the Pines on Ingram. In October of 2003, a 19 year old named Cody considers joining the Army to fight in the Iraq War so that he can escape the boredom of small town Woodville, New…

There’s no service in this attic—yet phantom vibrationsmake my heart skip a beat,thinking you’ve finally reached out. I pick up my phone and write youanother text:the last time you saw me,I had fir…

Individual Submissions: OPEN Please submit previously unpublished writing on mental illness, neurodivergence, and suicide prevention. We want to read original work from the author’s perspecti…

I’m still not brave enough to ask for help. I know that the scritch-scratching of lead on paper will yank my attention like a chain. I know that the strong perfume will cloud my mind with sickly-sw…

Hydrayou love translucent amber ambrosia and drowning in the din of last call you love globes of ghastly lightyou love gilton tasting glasses sticky mahogany you love to hate allthese sticky endeav…

//silent scream//my husband asked me what happens when two people talk to me at once andI said I become a caged animal who is backed into a cornerand the sweat falls in clear bullets andthat’s irra…

The FloodPregnant with my son, I dream of drivingthe car folding itself like a paper swaninto the cold mouth of the Chesapeake.A mother and child sleeping underwater,the sound of exhaustion’s lulla…

Long Island Sad Poems Serotonin Press has published its first poetry collection! Click the link above to buy your copy of Long Island Sad Poems by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella. Long Island Sad Poems nav…

Anxiety is a phantom that’s been my shadow for years. You say I have anxiety like it’s negative, but anxiety is a coin toss. Some days, my mind is a prison, an escape room I can’t leave, a tower in…

Ideation To Do List𝥷 September 1st—Back To School Night! Write in planner, so I won’t forget. Don’t know if I’ll make it.𝥷 (for poem) It’s August 25th, a day after her birthday. Her eyes sparkled l…

November brought heavy downpours, erasing all traces of the fall foliage from the trees. I slipped outside during a break in the rain and inhaled the crisp late afternoon and fusty scent of wet lea…

Trichotillomania  (Trigger warning: anxiety disorders, hair pulling, self-harm) Strands of hair fall one by onelight brown and brittle, delicate enoughto thread a sewing needle—My hair? The thread.…

Busy is good for people like us Busy keeps the pull away that unravels  The sound of low bellows always distracting  A little ringing in my ear Tapping your feet methodically  Tappin…

“And now I am become death. Destroyer of worlds”— Bhagavad GitaFirst step in writing a poem is first fleshening it in the potters wheel of the mind. Like how they said their god said “let us create…

After Sylvia Plath’s Edge The letters writhe as my fingertips tickle my iPhone’s keyboard. It’s 2:20 am. My pupils move in every direction, drawing circle-like shapes in the air, imploring my eyeli…

Every time I get up something new hurts,like a pinball bouncing to the next bellof pain, close to tilt, no lucky replay.I sit back down and rub the latest.It makes it difficult to enjoy all this en…

(Write it!)

Water as cold  as a blade. An icicle tipped against the mind’s scaffolding. You wouldn’t know purity in steel: the first time,   with father’s scissors; after I groveled in my five  day lover’…

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