Featured Poet - Anna Hostetter

THE TOLL OF THE TIDE

The tide is a slow, relentless crushing,

And I am tired—so hollowed out by the effort of it all.

Every breath is a tax I can no longer pay,

A desperate, frantic interest on a debt that never clears.

My limbs feel like marble in this dark, freezing expanse,

And the surface—the light—is a taunting, distant roof

That rises further away with every weak stroke I take.

I trusted the currents, I trusted the hands that once held me,

Believing they were anchors meant to keep me grounded.

But they were only weights, fashioned from broken promises,

Used to drag me down until the air became a luxury I couldn’t afford.

The ones who swore to stay were the first to sever the line,

Leaving me to drift in this wreckage of forsaken vows,

Discarded like a ghost in the foam,

Used until I was empty, then abandoned to the swell.

The waves do not ask permission to break,

They only demand I pay the toll in breath.

I am exhausted by the simple act of staying,

Of clawing at the surface of a dark, indifferent sea.

My arms are leaden, heavy with the weight of years,

And every movement is a treason against my own tired bones.

It is so incredibly hard to keep my head above the foam,

To not just close my eyes and let the silence take me.

Every second is a war, a raw and agonizing labor,

Where I am losing parts of myself to the current—

A fragment of my heart, a sliver of my name,

Until I am nothing more than a hollow ache,

A wisp of grey drifting over the abyss,

So tired, so terribly tired, of trying to breathe

When the whole world seems bent on keeping me under.

I am bruised by the memories that rise like sharks in the dark,

Vivid and violent, pulling me back to the sting of the hurt,

Back to the silence of rooms where I was broken and used,

Where words cut deeper than the salt ever could.

It is an endless, agonizing cycle, this drowning,

A loop of being shattered, picked up, and broken again,

Until there is so little of the original me left

That I feel transparent, fading into the grey spray of the storm.

I am exhausted by the simple, aching act of existing,

Of fighting the tide when every instinct screams to just sink.

There is no grace in this struggle, only a raw, jagged stamina,

A persistent, cruel war to keep my head above the waves

While the people who knew my heart best watch me succumb.

I am disappearing, piece by piece, lost to the depths,

So terribly tired of chasing the air,

And so very close to letting the water finally have its way.



ECHOES IN A HOLLOW VESSEL

I have perfected the art of the porcelain smile,

A white-washed stillness, a quiet, practiced sheen,

I pull the mask tight across the jagged miles

Of all the things that have left me feeling unseen.

The world wants a story, so I offer them a ghost,

I trace the lines of my skin, trying to find the border,

But I am a guest in a body that fears its own host,

Everything tilted, everything falling out of order.

You ask how I am, and I say I am doing fine,

While the silence in my chest screams loud enough to break,

I’m a map of a kingdom where there is no line 

Between the person I am and the one I have to fake.

If you cut me open, you wouldn’t find a vein,

Just an empty room, a foyer draped in grey,

I’ve practiced the performance, I’ve mastered the pain,

Until the girl I used to be just withered away.

I am the echo of a scream that never left the throat,

A hollowed-out vessel, a shadow cast in lead,

I am the shivering, the shudder, the tightening note,

The living pulse that is already—quietly—dead.

I keep the blade in the breath, I keep the dark in the eye,

Waiting for the structure to finally decide to fall,

It is a heavy thing, to live when you’re meant to die,

And to be nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all.



TETHERED TO THE LOOM OF EARTH

The forest exhales in a rhythm of rot,

Where the sunlight is bartered and easily bought.

The canopy closes, a ceiling of lead,

To stifle the prayers that remain in my head.

The fungi are glowing - a pale, sickly vein,

Drinking the nectar that drips from the rain.

They feed on the shadow, they thrive on the damp,

Igniting the dark with a bioluminescent lamp.

I am rooted in silver, I’m threaded in moss,

Counting the tally of every dark loss.

The trees are just pillars of hollowed-out bone,

Keeping the secrets that I’d ever own.

The stream is a mirror, it ripples and breaks,

Reflecting the shape of all my past mistakes.

It flows to a basin, a black, liquid eye,

That watches the lightning, pleading to die.

The earth is a stomach, it’s patient and slow,

Waiting for the things that it’s ready to grow.

And I am the seed, in the dark, in the deep,

Lulled by the forest to permanent sleep.

WILDFLOWERS IN THE CAGE

I am drifting again, through a veil in the air,

Slipping out of my skin, leaving life in despair.

The world loses color, the edges grow thin,

A quiet suspension of all that has been.

The school is a factory of noise and of rule,

Where floor wax and mold hide the fear of the school.

I sit in the classroom, a cage made of glass,

Where the scent of the cedar and dust comes to pass,

And the cloying, sweet glue cannot mend what is torn,

While the class celebrates for the week they have borne.

Then the pizza arrives—a thick, heavy wave—

A hunger-filled ache for the life that I crave,

While I wait in the void of a hollowed-out cry,

Denied every morsel as others draw nigh.

The teacher looms over, her glare sharp as flint,

Hating my skin with a venomous glint.

I do not know why—for I love every soul—

But she harbors a malice that takes its dark toll.

I beg to the Heavens, I plead for a change,

For her heart to be softened, for mercy to range,

But she deepens the cold, and she points to the room:

“You belong behind curtains,”—the cloth is my tomb.

The students all jeer as they smear me with spite,

Her presence a mountain of shadow and blight.

“Stay silent and hidden, don’t look at the fun,

You are nothing but awful, your damage is done.”

I rest on the laminate, numb in the chill,

With a mark on my face from the pressure of will,

And I melt into plaster, I slide through the wall,

Becoming a shadow, no substance at all.

The television cart hums with a metallic squeal,

A rasp on the tile—a sound I can’t heal.

The Sandlot flickers with static and buzz,

While I drift from the desk, from the person I was,

With her looming shadow cast over my side,

In the silence where only my terrors reside.

But the bell brings the field, and a moment of peace,

Where I hide in the brush for a brief, soft release.

The air smells of grass, freshly cut, sweet and wild,

And the petals are soft in my hands, like a child.

I admire the blossoms—the purple, the blue—

They are vibrant and simple, and honest and true.

If I weave me a crown, perhaps I’ll feel light,

As if I’m allowed to exist in the sight.

I am weaving to ground me, to find my own pulse,

To prove that I matter—to fight the revulse.

Then a group of young girls walks toward where I sit,

And I hope for a friend—but they extinguish it.

They sneer at my clothes, withered, hole-ridden, worn,

With hand-me-down tears and a spirit out-torn,

They mock my cheap shoes, they call me a wretch,

And feed on the hunger of fears that they fetch.

“You’ll always be alone,” they scream at the sun,

“Do us all a favor and be finally done.”

Then they trample the crown, tearing petals from life,

Laughing as they finish their day’s work of strife.

Then the final bell rings, a harsh, jagged toll,

Signaling the end of the day’s quiet role.

The engine roars life—a metallic, hungry beast—

And the door squeals its mandate for the prey to be least.

I walk to the curb with the weight of the sun,

Toward the yellow metal cage—my retreat is undone.

The bus is a trap, smelling of leather and rot,

With gasoline fumes in the air, thick and hot.

My hair was my glory, the one pride I kept,

The only true beauty while secretly I wept,

Then they press the wet gum deep in strands of my hair,

Ruining the light I was struggling to bear.

I break into sobs as they watch my despair,

Leaving me shattered, stripped of my prayer.

They spit out their slurs—my palms slick with sweat,

As they mock how I tremble in lingering debt.

And with every mile closer to the house of my dread,

The acid of terror rises up in my head.

It is no home for the heart, no refuge for skin,

Just a structure of malice where the shadows begin.

When the engine is still, the darkness descends:

First comes the brother on whom my pain tends—

A leaden, dull fist as he tears at my flesh,

While his venomous words keep my spirit in mesh.

Then the other one waits, his intent like a blade,

As I stare at the ceiling, where the stars ought to fade.

I am fading away, I am withering thin,

Drifting past flesh, past the reach of the sin.

All while my mother—the ghost of my hope—

Showers my baby brother in kisses, gives him the scope

To be king of her love, while she turns to yell,

Leaving me trapped in this silence, this hell.

She arrives in the night, when the wreckage is done,

Offering no harbor to her daughter—only her son.

I lie in my room, in the dead of the dark,

Staring at the wall—half-pink, half-white, and stark,

With a carousel border, frozen in flight.

I whisper to dolls and to stuffed, tattered friends,

Creating a love that the real world pretends.

Then a voice from the plaster—a lost, little boy,

Who died in the silence, who left all his joy—

He speaks from the shadows, a ghost that I hear,

Soothing the bitter, deep sting of my fear.

We share in the isolation, the hollow, the cold,

A companionship forged before I grew old.

I search for a way to fade into the scenes,

To slip past the horses, to abandon these dreams,

Praying for the end, for the silence of death to be my own.

I am not made of blood, I am not made of human,

I am hollowed by hammers, a ghost in the room.

I have mapped out the ending, the quiet, the kill,

Wishing the stillness would finally fill.

There is only one harbor, one doorway to keep,

The grey, velvet curtain of entering sleep.

Only in dreams does the terror subside,

Only in dark does the world let me hide,

Begging for safety, for a hand that is kind,

While the monsters of memory stay stitched to my mind.

THE GHOST’S MOURNING

There is a strange, quiet mechanics to a life lived in shadow.

The hands move. They turn the doorknob, wash the glass, type the words, fold the clothes. The feet walk forward on solid ground, keeping pace with a world that moves in bright, noisy colors. To anyone looking out from the shore, everything appears exactly as it should. The clock ticks, the day turns to night, and the routine remains unbroken.

But behind the glass of the eyes, the pilot has gone missing.

This is the state of the living ghost: a functional stillness where the volume of the universe has been turned completely down. It is a profound, echoing numbness—not a sharp pain, but a vast and hollow cavern where identity used to live. You look into the mirror and find a stranger staring back, a silhouette wearing your clothes, speaking with your voice, but entirely devoid of a pulse. The heart beats, yes, but it feels nothing but the cold, heavy drafts of loneliness and a quiet, permanent sorrow.

And then, without warning, the fog recedes. The numbness thins, and the world rushes back in.

But there is no joy in the awakening. Because when the dissociation breaks, it leaves you standing in the wreckage of a different life—a beautiful, phantom existence that feels so tantalizingly close, yet entirely out of reach. You are left to mourn a timeline you never got to live, a version of yourself you never got to be. 

You stand on the threshold of a door that will not open, weeping for a home you can see through the window but can never enter.

The fog always returns to claim the view, burying the grief back into the quiet, frozen dark. And the hands begin to move again, going through the motions, waiting for the next time the ghost wakes up to mourn.

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