Broken Hearts Gallery Literary

Pls be careful, thx.

by Elliott Coates

Two things can be true at the same time. So.

EC is a Canadian expat poet in Richmond, Virginia. @elliottcoates.bsky.social

Fix for Losing a Mother

by Anne Anthony

Swing in a backyard hammock. Let sparrows question your motives. Rock away the ache. A gentle sway, cradling grief in your mother’s arms. The body remembers, if you cannot.

Anne Anthony, a North Carolina digital collage artist, works as the Art Director for the online literary magazine, Does It Have Pockets. FB: @anchalastudio Bluesky: @anchalastudio.bsky.social

Repeat

By Jenny Wong

We relived our lives in lyrics, learning that music is a misdirection for the heart. You never knew I meant each word for you. Us sitting, never touching, backs against the foot of your bed, empty jewel cases scattered, time
as endless
as a single song
on repeat…

Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Bluesky: @jenwithwords.bsky.social

Composure

by Marianne Goldsmith

He turned me on to film composers like Max Steiner, who scored ‘Gone with the Wind.’ I loved listening to the lush, dramatic orchestration while we drove through the Sierra. Yet, just like Ashley Wilkes, who couldn’t deal with his true feelings for Scarlett O’Hara, he never proposed. I survived.

Marianne Goldsmith is a writer and editor, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and who has lost count of the number of years she has been writing fiction and creative nonfiction.

Broken promise of three words

@Jour.neyfox by Journey I.K Fox

I love you,
A promise, I wish I knew, was too rare to keep.
I couldn’t see the world without you, like a photo with the eyes scratched through.
I wish too, we weren’t kids who bleed out too soon.
Just before the concert we were supposed to go to

Queer thing in a human form, who found found home in the other worlds in their head, and is desperately trying to to draw and write them all down. Bluesky: journeyfox.bsky.social

Band: Starset

Deficit

By Vishaal

For some of us, the biggest struggle has been learning to fall in love with ourselves.
The world has capitalized on this deficit.
Oh, the dividends they’ve reaped our whole lives from our failed investments in them.

Vishaal writes short stories and poems, mostly about memories – partly-true, partly-corrupted and incrementally slipping away.

Tick-tock-tick

by Manisha Sahoo

the watch stopped working three years ago,
and I waited two years before I changed its battery–
I waited till all traces of hate had peeled off of my ribcage
and left behind scars of sweet, aching nostalgia;
I waited until you were a happy memory again.

Manisha Sahoo daydreams a lot and is quick to lose track of time, but deadlines get her going. X – @LeeSplash

We Haunt Each Other

by Mileva Anastasiadou

When time stopped,
we spent all of our time
counting time,
expecting time to start over,
but time didn’t.

We turned into ghosts,
and when stars come alive every night,
we come alive and sing to each other,
in blissful nightmares and terrifying dreams,
in tales of silence broken.

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist and a writer from Athens, Greece. twitter: @happymil_

My Last Headshot

by M.R. Mandell

Light draws
my cheekbones
into angular lines,
hair tousled
to the side,
head tilted towards
the Hollywood sign,
lashes brushed up
like wings.
I usually don’t like
looking at my face,
but this photo is alright,
it’s proof
that I had a dream,
for a few years,
I could fly.

Poet living in L.A. with my dog & my love. Words in/forthcoming: SWWIM, McNeese, HAD. X: @mrmandell8, Bluesky: @mrmandell8

Andy, You’re a Star (For Andy N. Condor, 1959 – 2023)

By Clem Flowers

met Andy when i moved to the desert. no arch goth hitch no fright no fear – a sweet bachelor living out the autumn of his years in peace. always delighted getting out meeting his loyal subjects. gutted when he passed. sleep well, sweet king. long may you reign.

queer, married to an amazing multidisciplinary artist hubby, proud kitty parent, living out in red sand desert nowhere. @clem_flowers on Twitter, @clemflowers.bsky.social on Bluesky

Misty

by Debbie Robson

I still see her. A fat staffy regularly walking along the top of an impossibly thin fence. Come back here, we’d yell. The glance over the shoulder as she jumped down to freedom. A look of defiance: As if! I’m off!

Debbie Robson is fascinated by the first sixty years of the last century and her poems, micro, flash and short stories have been published internationally and online. x: @lakelady2282

http://www.debbierobson.net/

Weld

by Kathryn Reese

…his trace minerals
returned to earth or stars
and I—no longer malleable
still dream gun smoke,
still keep a face-shield in case
the ecstasy of purple lights
ignites.

Kathryn Reese is a poet & medical scientist living on Peramangk land in Adelaide, South Australia. Bluesky: @kathrynreese.bsky.social

Single-Ply Heartbeat

By NK

I’ve been stuffing things my whole life–stones in my jean pockets and candy wrappers in an empty drawer. Tissue for shoes that didn’t fit, and for bras too big. To look taller, fuller. Complete. But it crumpled in the holes in my heart. I couldn’t stop the bleeding.

NK is a multi-ethnic writer of speculative fiction, creative nonfiction, and is working on her debut novel. Bluesky: nadiaking@bsky

The Little Tweak

By Sumitra Singam

The moment my heart broke wasn’t:
your diagnosis
the paediatrician’s prescription “for a little tweak”
When you missiled the medication saying “the world can tweak itself”

It was when:
your bag-of-worms body stilled, your chubby face sombred, and you said “I think the tablets were helping. I’ll take them again.”

Sumitra usually writes the prescriptions, so this one was hard. Bluesky: @pleomorphic2

the curse of the trevally

by nat raum

when i thought he had drowned in the ocean, i was elated to receive an opal necklace from the beach in cabo san lucas. years later, i would put it on—just to see how it felt—and feel its sterling silver burn my skin, constricting like velvet choker.

nat raum is the poet laureate of the void; their corporeal form lives in Baltimore. Bluesky/X: @gr8earlofhell

son of a gun

CW suicide

by Natalye Childress

i think of him more than i care to admit. sometimes, i listen to that mixtape, the one that was playing on my car stereo the night we met. “…son of a gun, you are the only one.” i wonder what would’ve killed him if he hadn’t done it himself.

Natalye is just a happy kid stuck with the heart of a sad punk. Bluesky: @natalye.bsky.social X: @deutschbitte

Hummingbird

by Julia Halprin Jackson

There are reminders everywhere: in rainbows and hummingbirds, the rhythm of your brother’s laugh, the bedtime lulls when your sister says, “Where did Scout go?”

I twirl your ring. Your cells are mine; mine are yours. The sky is abundant. This love goes nowhere, even as I call your name.

Julia Halprin Jackson is a writer, editor and mother. Bluesky: @juliahj.bsky.social

Liberty

@annehowk by Anne Howkins

He leaves you… no forwarding address; the empty silence that follows hurricanes; three-hundred crayons, none of which are lie-coloured; a Paris map you’ve marked with battle-sites; a Liberty bowl; his artworks, mainly blue, black and nude pink; emptied bank accounts. You will return some things, but keep your fractured heart.

Anne likes writing very short stories, walking, dancing, singing and adores her grandson. Bluesky: @anneh23.bsky.social

Never Long Enough

by Karen Grose

It’s not his thumping tail or his soft brown eyes looking up at me that kills me. The discarded collar slices my heart like a blade through soft butter. Most weeks, I’m okay. But today, I’m unsure if grief is worth the price of love.

Karen is a writer from Toronto, Canada. X: @kgrose2 FB: Karen Grose

There Are Good Reasons

by Amy Marques

Because nobody should have to make room for you, because taking up space is garish, nobody is obliged to listen, and nobody wants neighbors to know what you think, because you wouldn’t want to be disagreeable, everyone knows there’s no need to keep asking why, because there are good reasons.

Amy Marques is editor & artist for Duets, chapbook Are You Willing? and the found poetry book PARTS – more at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.

@amybookwhisper1 (x), Amarilis Amy (FB), @amymarques (bluesky)

Runaway

by Maile Kahana

I never cried more than the day Mom died. I was a runaway finding my way back when time ran out. A quarter century later, my heart broke all over again when I found this card from her, an expression of her love through an image of a shared dream.

Gardener, Memorist, Mother

Kaleidoscope

by Jenny Wong

If I said the color of your eyes, would that be too vague? There are, after all, six different eye colors in a world that turns with eight billion lives. And you never noticed me as anything more
than a periphery star
always falling
from the edge
of your
view.

Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Follow Jenny on Bluesky: @jenwithwords.bsky.social