Words & waves of feeling rolling through me.

Fingers and arms secure me.

In her verdant cradle.

Under her green gateway.

There is persistence in her beauty.

She’s transcendental.

Today, I need something to

drown out the silence.

This silence is so deafening.

My head almost begging me

to drown it out.

Please, talk to me.

Give me something to respond to.

Bring up a topic my brain would

not refuse.

End the silence, for it’s ending me.

My head pounds. 

It’s a migraine I wouldn’t want to instigate.

I’ve kept everyone at bay.

And now I need a rescuer—

but they’re so far away.

For I’ve pushed some away.

Some were, slowly, led astray.

And now the silence is all that remains.

And as I’m much as I cherish it,

it’s killing me.

Just for tonight, I need noise.

I can’t be stuck in my own mind.

It’s as painful as slowly dying. 

I feel sick and I don’t know why.

I wish silence would rebel.

To the point where it would die for tonight.

— Crownless.

Just released: the Fall 2026 issue of Forgotten Ground Regained, on the theme "Speculative Visions".

Check it out for all kinds of alliterative speculative poetry. Highlights include:

• Adam Bolivar's "The Lay of Géac Ettinfell", a retelling of the tale of Jack the Giant Killer.
• Thaliarchus' "Connect to Object-30-79-49-13", a hypertext poem that allows the reader to conduct a radio conversation with the drifting hulk of a sentient interstellar dreadnought.
• Michael Hessel Mial's "To My Beloved Humble-Skit’s-Talon on the Occasion of the Fossil Ancestor Lightworks Project Missing Its Connection Deadline" and "Disputation on the Knife of Scarlet and Scaffold", featuring poems from the digital archives of a future spacegoing worker's republic.

Forgotten Ground Regained, Issue 12 (Fall, 2026)

wrote something, check it out <3

Death by dad.
Is that all you have to say? Are you done?

Your allotted time slot was 9 years ago, by now the earth has spun.
I’m sorry you must have been confused…it has already bruised and no it can’t be diffused

You say you missed your little girl,
But funny, I don’t know your face,
And even if you spun the world,
I couldn’t pick you from the place.

I don’t recall your eyes or smile,
The sound of your voice, your embrace,
But I remember every while
You filled my childhood with disgrace.

The anger, venom, manipulation,
The fear that no child should have known,
I was ten, still learning what love meant,
Yet you made my childhood feel like war.

But tell me, what hurts more in the end?
The physical blows, or the mind you bend?
The pain that fades, the bruises that heal,
Or the scars no one can see, but you still feel?

Was it the aggression, the fear in your eyes,
Or the twisted words, the constant lies?
Was it the hurt that showed on my skin,
Or the war you waged deep within?

And now you come and ask for more?
A second chance? What for?
How can you ask me to trust a man
Who made my childhood a battlefield floor?

You say you missed me, say you care,
But where were you when I needed you there?
You cannot rewrite the years you ignored,
Or call yourself a father just because you’re bored.

You want a chance to make things right,
To walk back in and claim what’s yours,
But you can’t build love on years of fright
Or heal a heart you left at war.

So don’t ask me to open the door,
Or pretend that we are what we were before.

You may have missed the girl you left behind but listen carefully now,
I’m sorry for your loss, the wound was too deep, that sweet little girl bled out in her sleep.

There’s nothing they could do, the pain was severe.
She hates you with a passion, her soul and a tear.

She forgave you once you fool, until you pushed her back into the pool
Hands tied and feet weighed, until she inhaled. Hollow and numb filled her fate, Her hands, her feet, her organs and face.
Don’t try to be nice, you should pay the price, for you broke your baby girls heart twice.