Current Issue 2026

Flowers blossom on my skin,

sapping nutrients from beneath the surface.

Roots curl and twist, hunting for my tears,

falling down, nourishing their branches and petals and fruit.

Growing, yearning, blooming, blossoming

repetitively and endlessly propagating
reproducing

until my skin is covered with an embroidered cloth of wild foliage.

Drops of sorrow sprinkle my lush skin,

and creatures swim in the pools of my pores,

basking in the refracted warm light,

dodging and ducking through the water.

Consuming, wondering, ravaging, rampaging

voraciously and mindlessly propagating,

reproducing

until oceans of life sprinkle my skin with vast expanses of blue.

The foliage and critters

combine and fuse into one, merging one with me

to be buried within my skin and tears

in perfect unity and harmony.

Champions of thought, irrationality and curiosity,

tiny and numerous as they are, 

construct nodules with my flesh and their blood,

disturbing and stealing my precious treasures of coal.

Caustic metal mars and scars my skin,

clouds of black lurk and clog my pores,

released by beasts of metal and flesh.

These creatures yearn for a better future

and wonder to discover their existences

but transform the world around them

into unfeeling constructs of steel

propagating, reproducing,

only to leave behind a cacophonous void

where the animals and plants

cry to be reunited in flesh and mind with their maker.