Today’s choice

Previous poems

May Garner

 

 

 

The House Keeps Score

The house keeps score
in places no one checks any longer.
A hairline crack behind the fridge.
The soft dip in the hallway floor
where grief learned how to pace.

We didn’t mark the days
after you left.
We measured time by sound,
how the door stopped opening,
how the stairs forgot your weight.

There are rooms that still expect you.
They hold their breath
the way lungs do underwater.
Even now, the walls lean in,
listening for damage.

Early, I came to understand
that silence isn’t empty;
it’s crowded with what wasn’t said.
With apologies that miss their cue.
With footsteps that turn around too late.

Some nights, the house exhales.
Wood ticking like a body cooling.
I stand still, afraid to interrupt
whatever it’s remembering.

 

 

May Garner (She/Her) is an author and poet residing in rural Ohio. She has been writing for fifteen years, beginning her journey on Wattpad, and growing into a published author over the span of a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising (2023) and Melancholic Muse (2025). Her work has appeared in over thirty literary presses including Querencia Press, Cozy Ink Press, Arcana Poetry Press, Livina Press, Speckled Trout Review, and other.

Gary Akroyde

We searched for it

through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills

spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog

Nathan Curnow

I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—

Ash Bowden

Out again with the pitchfork churning 
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.