Tag: quiet

First Snow, Final Page

Poetry by Amber Lethe

The year ends quietly –
a book settling into its spine.
Snow falls in soft punctuation marks,
periods on windowsills, commas on evergreens,
ellipses hanging in the hush of afternoon.

Inside, the kettle clicks a familiar prayer,
a small applause for warmth still here.
We hold our hands to the steam and remember:
the burns, the blessings, the almosts,
the moments we meant to speak but didn’t.

Outside, the world turns blank, crystalline, kind –
as if offering us a clean margin,
urging try again, try softer, try braver.
We turn the page with mittened fingers,
ink still drying on our names.


Amber Lethe is an emerging writer whose work blends intimacy, atmosphere, and quiet surrealism. She writes about memory, seasons, and the small rituals that shape us. When not writing, she plays Vivaldi on piano, knits imperfect scarves, and reads classic books with her pug, Sir Merlin, snoring at her feet.

Hood

Poetry by Shaymaa Mahmoud and John Brantingham

My people immigrated here
from a little town near Nottingham Forest
and in the high romance

of childhood, I decided
that I must have Robin Hood’s
blood inside me

whether Robin Hood existed or not.
And if he did, I suppose I do
and probably the sheriff

of Nottingham and Little John
and whatever heroes and villains
and royalty and peasants,

and I suppose none of this matters.
This was just a boy dreaming
that he could be heroic,

and I don’t want to be a hero
anymore. My dead whisper to me
that to be quiet and kind is enough.


Shaymaa Mahmoud and John Brantingham are a father/ daughter writing team with hundreds of publications and over twenty books between them.

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