Featured Poet - Arina Alam

THOSE STARES

Those stares— 

they fall like acid rain 

on your bare, defiant skin, 

blistering deep, 

etching shame into flesh.

They pierce your chest 

with surgical precision, 

shatter your name 

like glass beneath boots— 

your identity, 

splintered without apology.

Each glance 

feeds the fire of your social anxiety, 

herding you back 

into that locked, 

windowless room 

where mirrors don’t lie, 

only multiply.

Their eyes are scalpels— 

measuring, dissecting, 

comparing your body 

to a blueprint that never included you. 

You twist, contort, 

a Rubik’s cube desperate 

to solve itself 

into something palatable.

Their gaze rots— 

clinging like mildew 

to the soft tissue of your being. 

Fungus blooms in your veins, 

the spores of scrutiny 

thriving in the warmth of your shame.

They plant handprints 

on the fragile membrane of your mind, 

and no amount of scrubbing 

erases the stench.

A foul scent lingers, 

growing inside you— 

a blood-fed parasite 

curled in your gut, 

churning nausea 

into every breath.

Still, you study them, 

those eyes— 

searching for meaning 

like ancient glyphs carved in stone, 

hoping each stares 

might hold a prophecy 

of something worthy in you.

But the anxious churn returns— 

its murmurs lunatic, 

its prayers sharp, 

begging your mind 

to stop rewinding 

the moment you were seen.

Seen— 

but never known. 

Never spared. 

Just stolen, 

again and again, 

by those stares.

ANATOMY OF AN ANXIETY ATTACK

A garland of anxious thoughts— 

tiny beads strung tight around my throat, 

a mundamala of skulls— 

threatening breath. 

Their weight blinds the eye of day.

Weeds grow thick around my heart, 

miring its chambers in silt and silence. 

Good thoughts slip, 

drown in the muck. 

My veins—thin canals— 

starve the soil 

where even memory forgets how to bloom.

I sip comfort from a rusted cup 

lined with disclaimers. 

Anxiety here doesn’t roar— 

it drips. 

Slow. Bureaucratic. 

A quiet leak 

that ruins the house 

before the paint even flakes.

My chest hosts a gathering 

of ghosts I didn’t invite. 

The music never starts. 

The walls still dance.

I dig through my ribs 

to scoop the fear out— 

but it clings, 

green as algae, stubborn and slick. 

In my gut, butterflies mutate, 

grow teeth, 

gnash through moss 

and feast 

on the soft architecture of peace.

I don’t recall the first betrayal— 

maybe when silence 

began sweating through my pores, 

like guilt with nowhere left to rot. 

Maybe when the mirror 

stopped returning what I forgot.

Nausea swells 

like a tide with no moon.

My skull— 

a cracked bowl 

beneath a sky of circling crows. 

They come— 

black-beaked, 

piercing the pulp of thought, 

bloodied and relentless.

I curl into the husk of a bed, 

a snail beneath a boot, 

its shell a dream. 

And I beg— 

not for comfort, 

only for silence. 

Only for the hunger to pass.