PLEASE HOLD ON

By Becky Styles

Please hold on:

as the day stretches past the eye,

shapeless, emptied of purpose,

the gaze clouded with fatigue.

Please hold on:

as the iris unspools its centre,

splintered, scraping at the edges,

the gape that’s held too much sorrow,

seen the dark swell of grief,

and the hours that tick, tick, tick.

Please hold on:

until the watching is done,

until every sight is stripped away

and still, you continue,

an eye that refuses to close.

Though tomorrow looks blurred,

though the horizon mocks with haze;

please, hold on.

Hold on to the eye’s other memory:

a gift left discreetly at the door,

a leaf turning in the river’s eddy,

the sky widening in the pupil’s mirror,

the sudden blaze of dawn.

Hold on to what the eye once gathered:

a child’s laugh, a lover’s touch,

a glint of sun on winter branches,

a thousand little joys.

Please hold on.

For even the weeping eye dries,

and opens again to wonder.

ABOUT BECKY: Becky lost her sister to suicide a year ago. She is a writer, English teacher, and meditation and movement guide whose work explores grief, healing, and the quiet emergence of joy. Winner of the K. Valerie Connor Poetry Contest, Becky writes and teaches to help others listen inwardly, embrace emotional truth, and reclaim life with courage and presence.

Instagram: @thesolyogi + @styles_yoga

NEVER AGAIN

By Cynthia Foss 

When loneliness takes over ... 

The depression ... 

The anxiety ... 

The feeling of always being judged ... 

The constant rewinding of conversations, 

getting lost in other people's perceptions of myself... 

When the heaviness is so, so heavy ... 

I remember when I was lost in those feelings ... 

It's all I ever knew. 

I can still feel the heaviness sitting on my chest ... 

Oh, those feelings are all too familiar, so easy to get lost in. 

It's easy to get caught up in the old familiar pattern ... 

I can't afford to lose myself again!! 

I will not lose myself again!!! 

I'm never losing myself again!!!

ESCAPE ARTIST

By Heeya

I try and find loopholes in lifetime agreements,

I slip through the edges of treacherous entanglements.

Sleep greets me in a harmonious pleasure—

I go places when fire burns near.

I run away from crisis fetching water bottles,

I tip my toes in salt air to avoid concepts.

I numb my heart running wild with pressure,

I take a few too many to avoid pleasure.

I seek out companionship and run when it gets too serious—

I’m a modicum of grace when dealing with lectures.

I flee my reality for stone-caged admirers,

I float in agony but refuse to be the wanderer.

I treat my stuffed toy with irrevocable care,

redirecting the caring finesse I wish was near.

I talk in my head in colourful accents—

each a different personality with restrained consent.

My father tells the doctor I have a tendency to be the escape artist;

I allow my head to dip

at this quiet accusation of violet injustice.

And perhaps his perception is true—

I’m an escape artist,

forging alliances with slumber

to portray my gilded cage of mischief.

Running away from the realities of cumbersome honesty,

losing myself in the crevices of tiring monstrosity.

Tethering along the lines of absent to minimalist,

I’ve come to accept my sleep addiction

as a distraction to my conscience.

My thoughts run wild

in a metachromatic display of ravenous indisposition—

most too dark to be revealed

without the occasional medicated foresight.

Depression—

a kaleidoscope of incapacitating rush of anger,

peeking through the blinds of undercut illuminous thunder.

Tears, a circumstantial derivative of misplaced anger and hurt;

dreams, the metaphysical component

of quiet brunt I’m forced to shoulder.

And then there is survival through medicated slumber—

agony, a vessel for corresponding chambers.

All roads lead to inward contemplation:

a shot of whiskey drenched in peace and miscommunication.

The chemistry of burnout

is perhaps the brain’s voltage strangulation—

even dreams portraying

the caricature of avenging contradiction.

A psychological odyssey of sequential disregulation—

an escape artist forging through the strands of poetic placetation,

weaving dreams, wakefulness, sleep and realities

in a string of callous conjugation.

My artistic transcript lies

in my management of conscious indiscretion.

ABOUT HEEYA:  Heeya is a poet and storyteller whose work delves into the delicate intersections of the mind and the heart — exploring trauma, healing, self-blame, love, and survival through layered, emotionally intelligent verse. A medical student by day and a dreamer by night, she writes as both confession and reclamation, translating the clinical language of the body into the emotional language of being. Her poetry often blurs the boundaries between science and soul, intellect and intimacy — crafting spaces where pain becomes art, and silence finally speaks.



A PITCH BLACK ROOM

By Shreya Pendurkar

a pitch black room

and a slant trail of light.

and if i dropped my lids,

i'd fall into a deep, lustrous slumber.

i'd wake up dazed and drunk;

wild and furiously troubled, by the brink of

sluiced sunlight rupturing my gaze.

but i am wide open to the nothingness around me.

i've looked so hard at the dark patches of tonight

that my eyes have become meadows to the

limply swaying, tragic midnight air…

my lungs gulp the essence of tonight,

my eyes wide open,

my soul ever-awake, although unconscious,

yet capable of mysterious alertness…

i listen carefully, the mumbling of my thoughts.

the frittering, aimless, fictional tales of my dreamland.

nights are the most dreaded hours,

when silence seeps inside my veins,

and yet my mind chatters ceaselessly

driving me crazy

by its ferocious spell.

i loathe for sleep, and the more i invite it closer,

the it sullenly walks away.

leaving me in the helpless company

of my ghostly mind.

ABOUT SHREYA: Shreya is 20 years old and lives in India.

DID GOD DIE?

By Florence Kendra Nnolum

Each day, I wait for death’s arrival

I check the doors, the windows,

hoping it will come quietly,

to take away the pains lodged in my heart,

the weight of wrong choices,

the sting of rejection,

the cold negligence of those

who pretend to care,

those who wear love like a mask

but harbor shadows within.

I wait for it to lift the despair

clenched in my chest,

the wall that keeps my heart

from reaching those who truly love me.

This pain pulls me back

to years gone by,

to memories of hatred undeserved,

of eyes wishing me harm

for reasons I could never name.

And I ask again.

Did God die?

For my life feels like a grave,

the grave of depression and

suicidal thoughts I thought

I had buried five years ago.

Yet here they are, screaming louder.

Could there be another place?

A place beyond this world

where love is not a weapon,

where judgment cannot wound,

where no voice shouts,

no hands violate,

no hearts reject?

I am tired.

So tired.

I might end this pain soon.

ABOUT THE POEM:  This poem came from a very personal place, from moments when I felt completely unseen and unheard, even by God. It captures that heavy silence that comes with depression, when everything feels like a cycle of pain you have already fought before and thought you had overcome. Writing “Did God Die?” was my way of giving words to those buried feelings, the loneliness, the exhaustion, the quiet question of whether hope still exists when life keeps breaking you in the same places. It is not a declaration of giving up; it is more like opening a wound so it can finally breathe. Through it, I wanted to show that even in the deepest despair, there is still a voice speaking, a voice that is still searching, still questioning, still alive. Sometimes that voice is the first step back toward healing.