You love through time and space, across electronic grids and wind. You meet in dream dimensions, making love in the color. You are formed, yet formless. You who understand this connect in the most beautiful ways.

From the upper view there is a light of soft lavender exuding into your skies. It is amass across your planet. On the ground you see on television screens, destruction and dark matter propaganda leashed on you by master illusionist Cabals.

If you choose to travel, please do, to a higher view, then look down upon your Earth. From this perspective the view is completely different. It is a light show of glowing souls. Oh, your world is not ending. It is just beginning.

Give not way to fear, dears. See the beauty around you, for it is in this mindful observation that you will increase your own illumination. And when you see YOU the same as WE see you, you will no longer be confused.

You will feel your own infinite DNA abilities. You will understand the other earths, with beings who walk upright and down low, in form and in gradient light. You will embrace and accept your future with not as much distraction from your past.

So, close your eyes and fly. Rest a moment inside; in the quiet. See with your inner eyes the view of yourself from the skies. You are sunlight.

©️

Let your work find its place in Liminalines

The girl in the black dress

is face down in the dirt

smothering quietly while

the oblivious ones dance.

Red lipstick doesn’t just

leave stains on collars.

The girl in the black dress,

they said was just different,

walked around silent

with notebooks under arms,

pens in her hair like

porcupine quills, her face

always askew in thought.

The girl in the black dress

had one for every weekday.

Sunday, the lace collar, to

keep her close enough to

the Father just in case

there was truth to the story.

The girl in the black dress

loved pink more than anything.

“Pep-to Dismal,” Mama said.

“Black is more slimming. Especially for a girl like you.”

A girl like you, that girl,

invisible, incapable,

unloveable girl.

The girl in the black dress

lived drenched in loneliness;

just her, shelves of journals

documenting the pain,

a closet of dresses and an imprint

of lipstick left on a rock.

The girl in the black dress

is face down in the dirt

letting Mother Earth

extract all that hurt.

Vennie Kocsis © 1994-present by Vennie Kocsis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

On this final black moon,

I will not plead.

I do not persuade.

I won’t chase what refuses alignment.

This night is not about wrath.

It is a final recording.

The veil has evaporated.

The mirror is now open.

And every choice steps forward

to reveal who you truly are.

You were shown the moment many times.

You were offered pauses and poise.

You felt the realness

But called it nothing.

So now you listen.

What is true will always stand.

What is false will forever turn inward,

Into your blood forever.

No force hunts you, for

your own footsteps return to you.

By the falsehoods you have formed,

by the harms you justified,

by the truths that reached for you

and were turned away;

This is the final closing.

All is officially sealed into the soulless.

This is the hour where mercy rests for good and consequence takes life, breathing deep.

Choose now.

No empty promises.

Only action.

Because after this moon sets,

At midnight before the hour

Where reckoning takes form,

the mirror does not move again.

And what answers your calls now

will only wear your face,

Will only carry your deeds,

and arrive in the darkness of night,

To remind you of what you chose.

By the power of three times three.

So mote it be.

and it harm none do as ye will

and it harm none do as ye will

and it harm none do as ye will

Vennie Kocsis © 1994-present by Vennie Kocsis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

There is a silence that screams before demolition…

a breath that tastes of iron and confession.

The moon leans too close,

a voyeur to the last trembling light

on the skin of something alive once,

now rotting slow beneath its own promise.

Shadows kneel like disciples…

worshiping the absence that made them….

Somewhere…

a clock coughs up its final tick,

and the air thickens with the sound

of prayers forgetting their words.

You can feel the dark thinking.

It knows your name;

the secret one you never said aloud.

It waits with patience,

to devour you

to remind you

that all light eventually

returns home to it.

The trees do not whisper.

They bear witness.

Crooked fingers clawing at a sky

that has already turned its back.

Even the stars avert their eyes

when the mouth of night

opens wide enough

to swallow sound, soul,

and the shape of hope.

Beneath your feet,

the earth forgets your footsteps.

The ground no longer remembers

the warmth of the living.

Everything slows to a crawl;

then stillness,

then the intimate noise of nothing.

You reach for something,

a name, a light, a God.

But it crumbles like old ash

between your trembling fingers.

The dark does not mock you.

It does not laugh.

It simply surrounds your existence,

reminding you that it was always here,

waiting behind the thin veil of the choices

you called reality.

There is no punishment.

Only inheritance.

This is the silence that holds the world

when even the ghosts have forgotten

how to speak.

And still,

you kneel,

shivering,

at the edge of something

older than death,

beneath the open, patient mouth of night.

Vennie Kocsis © 1994-present by Vennie Kocsis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

You might be a tsunami or you could be the raft to safety. There are phrases, trigger situations that make her step back. She finds balance with the sea and forest. Rarely with other humans. So often taken personally, she is sometimes shy and many times wary. She knows what she carries; what she protects. One wrong step, and she is quietly observing again.

She doesn’t follow leaders. She is her own guru. She is a solitary yearning of scribing while others are trying to find answers they don’t believe they already know. You will rarely truly understand her. You will create your own perception of her, and it will become your view; your truth of her.

She has almost reached exceptions of exceptional aloneness. Shift change. She walks the road one foot at a time. From her perch, hovering above this planet, she listens. One sentence can change her elation to disappointment; hoping to expand knowing. She is distant and suddenly feeling in reverse. It’s all in the language. She swiftly re-stabilizes her skies.

Humans with the need to believe in anything, something, outside of the truth of who they are; some forever from the gray; when doing good comes with accolades instead of silent appreciation. It’s a sad state of a nation; planetary devastation, and she feels each heart caving.

I am here holding hers. Reminding her of home where there are no religions or rituals, no groups separating one from another or elevating egos; no clashing perspectives; just being in a space so pure, assessment is not needed.

So she keeps her eyes on the color, to swim in the gel like liquid again, each stroke a whisper against her skin. She is reminded that she chose this and so close to finishing it. She breathes deeply, exhaling her humanness.

Weary a bit, we see in her eyes when they leak water to seep, ejecting the pain and programming. There are volumes held in boxes. Some are scrawled. Some are typed. They may get thrown in a trash pile when she dies. But she’s leaving them behind, in a hidden conclave of trees. Where maps must be followed to find them. There must be laughter, even in death.

Then you will know. You will discover the life of the Otherkin, earthly hybrid, walking among the human ones, unnoticed and undetected save the green reflected in her emotional eyes.

Vennie Kocsis © 1994-present by Vennie Kocsis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

🎧click the audio to listen to the spoken word version.

I was taken at three;

Scorned by four,

Rejected, and

Infected by the

Foul bowels of

The wicked.

It makes one flat

To watch the

Fragile entitled,

Crying in their shoes,

Brand new and

Fashioned, they

Eat up our empathy

Like bloody rations.

Too many afraid

To speak thoughts.

Who taught you to

Bend backward,

Squeeze the lips

Until the heart breaks?

Who took your voice,

Your identity which

Doesn’t reside in

The validation of a

Popular populous.

I’m not afraid of

Criticism or the likely

Troll who crawls

From its hole on an

Argumentative tour.

Like flies they always

Hover, hoping for shit;

Never able to find it;

Not in the deep way

They desire the fight.

When you’re raised

In invisible chains,

Beaten and torn with

No safe place to

Call home you see

This world in realism,

No thought suppressed.

You become fearless.

When you grow up

With your mouth sewn,

Disallowed a choice

A voice, an opinion

Or a fleeting notice,

You become thick

Inside the skin.

Words don’t sink

Inside. We let them

Be and tarry on.

I’m not living this life,

By anyone’s rules

For me. I will walk

Miles alone just to

Own my own reality.

When the mind

Becomes steady and

You feel ready, be the

You they tried to steal.

Fuck the P.C. Deal.

It’s time to feel the feels

And take the wheel.

I’m driving sixty one in a twenty five

And there’s so much

I don’t hide that you

Choose not to see.

Believe me. This one

Will be expired before

The realizations set in.

When your worth is

Rooted in your own girth,

And the sacrum feels

Steady, the others

Become blurry like a

Flurry of feet making

Time with streets they

Never stop to notice.

Not the ones hoping,

Their hands on head,

It’s a dead society of

Pompous piety.

You can’t lie to me.

You can’t hide from us.

We are always in

Your dust, tracking

The way you deviate.

Watching the way

You demons hate

The best of you,

Cuz they’ve made

A mess of you.

But the hybrids

Are here, dear,

And you have about

Sixteen minutes

To figure yourself out

Because time is of the essence

And we’re advancing.

And you have about

Sixteen minutes

To figure yourself out

Because time is of the essence

And we’re advancing.

©️

Let your work find its place in Liminalines

Two houses of bitter enemies, dwell in a city kissed by the sea.

A hatred rooted beyond their knowledge to see

The sorrow thy own actions bring.

Their son and daughter, at their first meeting, it was enough

To cage their hearts in a prison of love without a key

That agony will bring.

Before they could speak of the joy their eyes hath found,

Their friends crushed their dreams.

When they discovered they loved their enemy,

They cursed their hearts for its treachery.

Oh, sweet Ana, we are both victims and villains in this game of hearts.

We cage our hearts against this venomous love, but nothing tastes so

Sweet as your name upon my lips.

In moments, my joyful heart is emptied full of sorrow,

Then I must repeat your name until my heart is so full of joy, that it might break.

Ana! My dear sweet Ana!

Let loose the dove we cage and slay the wicked beast that keeps us at bay.

You fill me with disgust that you have injected your venomous poison into my veins.

I hate you, and yet, with every fiber of my being, I also love you.

This makes as much sense as a legless chair. Like a court jester, I play the fool.

This must be some jest from God, who finds humor in all my despair.

Oh Lord, find another fool to be your jester!

I was in heaven until you plucked me up and dropped me into hell.

Surely this is hell, to love someone who only speaks in serpent tongue to thine own ears.

I asked for the rose but got the thorns; the rose is her heart,

And the thorns are the words that keep it from being mine.

I met my Romeo, and that tale ended in tragedy.

I dare not put a dagger into my own bosom

To slay this ghostly creature that moans Antonio’s name.

Have I done some ill toward God and been cursed to love a man who surely hateth me,

As all of his kind hateth my family?

Love is like a rose; if one is not careful, it can prick thee.

One must tread lightly in matters of the heart,

Or one is doomed to swallow love’s poisonous pill,

Being ever consumed under its control.

Like a puppet, I am controlled by the puppeteer, Antonio,

Dancing to his sweet music.

I curse thee, Antonio, for your mischievous eyes and devilish smile.

Surely you have won the hearts of maidens with that grin alone.

You did not win my heart; you stole it, like a cunning thief!

You robbed me of a treasure that belongs to a just man

A good man, not a foul creature of your house.

Did someone slip me a love potion?

Did it take effect the moment our eyes met?

No! That is madness!

This is madness, to love someone when there is no hope of having them.

I envy the birds, their flight and freedom.

If I could sprout wings to fly and gain the freedom to love,

I would mend our hearts as one.

The tragedy of their quarrel killed their own morals,

Blinding them to do what is right and just.

Love could mend the bridge that hate hath burned,

But pride and shame can poison thine own eyes,

Making you see not the truth but believe in a lie 

Nothing poisons the body more than pride,

Being a slave to thine own mind.

The tragedy of Antonio and Ana is a tale of woe.

They could have the fruit that love brought  

But pride and shame poisoned it.

And now they are the ones to blame.

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Who stole your pearls?
Who reached into your soft, sacred shell with hands too rough to hold beauty;
ripping without reverence,
shattering the sanctuary of your tenderness,
leaving you bleeding salt and silence?
Who saw your glow and decided it needed dimming?
Who told you that you were not divine,
not sovereign,
not the radiant keeper of your own universe?

Who broke you in half and defined it as discipline?
Who starved your worth and told you to feast only when they approved?
Who whispered that love was something earned through obedience,
through silence,
through staying small?

Who closed your eyes so tightly that your dreams suffocated behind your lashes?
Who poured shame into your bloodstream,
so that even your laughter began to feel guilty?
Who made your love die slowly;
a soft fading star,
until every fiber, every trembling cell inside you
ached with the weight of a heartbreak you didn’t cause?

And now,
who dares to remind you
of your exquisite, unrepeatable existence?
Who holds the mirror steady
when your hands are shaking too much to see yourself clearly?

Do you remember how often you fall silent,
not only because there’s nothing to say,
but also, you’re waiting,
hoping,
aching
to finally hear it?
To hear someone say,
You were never broken. You were always becoming.

Who taught you to seek validation in other people’s words?
In approval stamped by tongues that never knew your crescendos?
Who made you believe your worth lived outside your body,
instead of flowing from the melodic sound of your own musical lips?

Darling,
you are a gift wrapped in stardust and strength.
You were never meant to be understood by everyone.
You were meant to sing,
not to please,
but to be.

To reverberate your truth so clearly that even the mountains pause to listen.

And yes, you are stumbling.
You fall.
You bruise.
But with every falter,
you are freeing your love.
You are peeling off the layers of what was never yours to carry.
You are walking… aching, glowing… into your own chosen becoming.

Stay steady on the climb.

You are not lost.
You are not late.
You are almost there.

And when you arrive,
the earth will sigh in recognition.
The sky will whisper, “She remembered.”
And you…
you will sing like you’ve never been broken.

Because you weren’t.
You were always only buried.
And now,
you rise.

Vennie Kocsis © 1994-present by Vennie Kocsis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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A hush falls.
Not awe.
Confusion.
Is it real? Is it parody?
Or has the circus replaced the state again?

Behind smoked glass and chrome-plated lies,
the halls sway and bow:
“Yes, sir… of course, sir…”
Bootlickers scurry like rats
hoping for a bite of cheddar-stained favor.

The Orange preens.
He adjusts the war-paint.
He speaks only in slogans,
treats truth like a golf ball,
meant to be driven far,
lost in the distance.

He built the High Castle
from cut corners and conned believers.
Each brick a broken promise.
Each floor a step down for someone else.
The moat filled with
the bones of the hopeful.

“Make It Magnificent!”
He declares,
as he sells them their own despair
wrapped in gold foil
and priced just out of reach.

He says: You matter.
He means: You amuse me.
He says: We will rise.
He means: You will kneel.
He promises everything,
while pickpocketing futures.

They chant for him;
phones raised like crosses at a burning.
They call it faith.
He calls it inventory.
One blink, one smirk,
and the cameras worship.

Power, he says, lives in the image.
But it’s control he craves,
the kind that turns devotion
into debt.

Up in the tower,
the throne isn’t a seat;
it’s a trapdoor.
Even the mirrors flinch now,
cracked under the weight
of too much self-regard.

He doesn’t notice.
He never has.
Because noise has always
drowned out consequence.

He wonders aloud:
“Where are they?”
The roar?
The cheer?
The rusted promise of love-for-hire?

But the crowd is gone.
Just static now.
Just a hollow ring
where once stood fools
who mistook cruelty for strength.

And still,
the Orange grins;
a jackal in a crown made of receipts.

“You thought I built this for you?”
he laughs,
reclining in his paper kingdom.

“No, no.
You built it for me.”

Vennie Kocsis © 1994-present by Vennie Kocsis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Want to have your poem, essay or article featured on Liminalines?

I didn’t recognize the woman in the glass.

She was five-foot-eight and barely a hundred and five pounds, a scaffolding of a person: bony angles where curves should have been, eyes too large for the face that held them. I braced against the sink because my legs weren’t convinced they could stand without help. The bathroom light was too honest, revealing the yellowed crescents beneath my eyes, the hollows carved under my cheekbones, the collarbones that read like punctuation marks in a sentence that had gone on too long.

There’s a specific cold that lives inside a body that hasn’t been fed; an ache in the bones, a shiver in the teeth. My hands trembled with it. The last of the high had drained out an hour earlier, leaving behind the white-noise throb of a comedown: heart knocking at the wrong tempo, thoughts misfiring, skin too thin for the air that touched it. I watched my chest rise and fall and counted, as if that might prove I still existed. Inhale. Exhale. Don’t disappear.

It’s a violent thing to see yourself clearly after months of working so hard not to. The mirror did not negotiate. It said: this is what’s left. Somewhere along the way, survival had stripped me for parts.

I thought about the road that led there and the hands that pushed. I was harmed by people who should have known better; by those I trusted, and by those the world told me I should.

After that came the quieter damage, the kind without photographs. Reality turned to fog. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe I was the problem. Abuse can be a shout, but the kind that works best is a whisper you start repeating to yourself.

And then came the bargains; the trades for oblivion when oblivion looked like mercy. I won’t make a spectacle of them. I’ll only say this: degradation becomes palatable when you file it under survival. You tell yourself it’s temporary. But temporary has a way of moving in and changing the locks.

People like to tidy this part of stories like mine. But harm reshaped me long before drugs entered the picture, and the drugs were not rebellion or romance. They were a technology; a way to mute the alarms my nervous system would not stop sounding.

Addiction didn’t storm the house; it picked the lock and sat down at the kitchen table.

It happened in inches. A little to take the edge off. A little more to sleep. Then suddenly the reasons didn’t matter. What mattered was the rhythm: use, quiet, regret, repeat. My life narrowed to a hallway I kept walking down.

Staring at the mirror, it landed with a thud that hollowed my chest: this might be the thing that ends me. Not the people who hurt me. Not the rooms I couldn’t escape. Me. The thought didn’t arrive as shame. It arrived as grief.

My fingers slipped on the porcelain. I tightened my grip and felt something small and stubborn spark; an old instinct, barely audible: live. Not an anthem. Not a vow. Just a sentence, rising from somewhere low in my body like a pilot light catching.

You’re still here.

I said it aloud to prove the room would reverberate the sound. I said it again; not as a promise to change overnight, not a bargain with God, not even a plan. Just a refusal to vanish without witnessing myself.

People romanticize this moment, the pivot, the montage, but the truth was quieter. It was an ember. It didn’t warm the room. It only glowed enough to show me the next inch of floor. And somehow, that was enough.

I stayed at the mirror until the person in it looked like someone I could choose again tomorrow.

This isn’t a story about destruction, though destruction is part of it. It’s a story about a nervous system that did its best to survive; about shortcuts that became cages, about the long road back through a body that remembered what my mind tried to forget.

I’m here to tell the truth in a voice my younger self would recognize. To say that numbness is not peace, silence is not safety, and disappearing is not the same as being spared.

You’re still here.

If that sentence resonates anywhere in you; quiet as a pilot light, small as a glow under the ribs, then come with me. We won’t rush. We won’t look away. We’ll learn how a body that shut down to stay alive can be taught, patiently and without apology, to live with the lights on.

is a writer working at the intersection of psychology, lived experience, and storytelling. She writes psychological memoir, reflective essays, and narrative fiction. She is currently completing multiple books.

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She rushes through the valleys, not to be a part, for she is a lone spirit

She rises through the plight of begotten times in a quest to remember

She amasses “will” to be her fountain of strength, whether she withers or pulls her feathers to her like taut cords that grow from within

She peels at them

Her mind arranges mysterious quotes on scrolls

So that time has not forgotten her

The blankets of her mind and the balance of her being

ever so delicate, are twined at their seams

With fingers, she writes the melody, holds her lingua, and resonates with the beginning of her completion

In a tiny mystical moment

Her plea is a grasp for the queen that lives within

Enormous, bountiful pith she reaps from expression

May she take this moment to remember...

Her elegance and her nimble curiosity for life

that moment cannot complete an end

©️

#poetry #poem #poets

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From the Cantrix

Reincarnated medievalism veil thin poetry. Poetry = soul speech. The Cantrix's mother tongue soul expression

By Jacqueline J. Jarvis

As the music moved, I saw the journey the man takes in life; his endurance, his heartbreaks, eras of solitude, and his eventual overcoming. The images turned into a narrative piece. What began as an orchestra of beautiful sound, became a short story, which danced itself into an audio spoken word piece, and finally, this lyric video.

These kinds of collaberations born through spirit; consciousness, are ones which move on the data lines of telepathy and intention. They come with healing and resolve.

Birth of a Hero

I didn’t arrive here clean.
I crawled.
Hands split on gravel.
Mouth full of dust and old prayers that never worked.

I learned early
that childhood is not always a place;
sometimes it’s a battlefield
where the smallest bodies learn strategy.
I memorized footsteps.
I learned silence like a second language.
I learned how to disappear
while standing in plain sight.

They called it resilience, later…
Back then it was survival.

I loved hard.
Made so many mistakes.
I gave my ribs to people
who only wanted shelter from storms they caused themselves.
I mistook hunger for devotion.
I mistook attention for loyalty.
I mistook mirrors for gods.

Betrayal doesn’t come loud.
It comes soft.
It sounds like promises said twice.
It looks like hands on your back
while someone measures the distance to the knife.

I lost lovers.
Not just to the pain 
Of death;
worse.
To indifference.
To convenience.
To the slow rot of people
who don’t want to become anything real.

Each time, I buried a version of myself
and kept walking
with less weight
and more clarity.

I watched false kings crown themselves
with borrowed language and stolen pain.
I watched prophets beg for applause.
I watched cowards hide behind movements
because standing alone scared them more than lying together.

Me?
I stepped out of the circle.

Aloneness isn’t exile.
It’s altitude.
Up here the air is thinner
but the vision is clean.
No noise.
No handlers.
No permission slips for my own becoming.

I took my losses
and turned them into rhythm.
I took my grief
and tuned it into frequency.
I took every scar
and used it as proof of passage.

Art was never decoration.
It was extraction.
I pulled gods out of my own chest
because no one else was coming to save me.

I stopped waiting to be chosen.
I stopped kneeling for approval.
I stopped mistaking loneliness
for lack.

Now I stand;
Quiet,
Egoless,
not begging to be seen.

Solid.
Contained.
Self-governed.

I am the man who survived himself.
I am the altar and the fire.
I am the moon and the ritual.

No followers.
No masters.
No borrowed myths.

Just a quiet power earned the hard way;
by walking through the wreckage
and refusing to turn back.

I didn’t become a god
because I wanted worship.

I became one
because I learned
how to stand alone
without disappearing.

There was that dream again;
the one coursing through my skin,
the dark planet of cliffs and crevices
where we leapt, trained, fought
in black so absolute
the eyes became useless
and scent turned into ley lines.

We learned aloneness as a language,
memorized the breath of predators,
ran the same terrain for years;
same space, same fear, same godless gravity.
Bodies morphing: solid, liquid,
shifting forms like it was nothing,
choosing whatever shape
made survival attainable in the moment.

Have you ever smelled
the absence of light?
It stinks of coal and sulphur,
of emaculite burning from the inside out;
that morbid, barren place
where no one eats,
no one rests,
and the only thing that feeds you
is loneliness.

Then came bath night
just a few years back;
candlelight flickering; old ancestors,
water warm, breath quieting
into a meditative rhythm.
She and I;
daughter and mother,
soul and shadow,
the one and the we;
went flying again.

I followed the spinning hole,
the one you run from
until you finally don’t.
In we went:
sky-water, water-sky,
dimensions slicing open
into flat colors below our float.
I spun back,
looked down,
shot forward;
and there it was.

The maze.
Walls high, miles wide.
She whispered,
“There… the dark place
where you faced
the beasts; where you slayed them.”

I was confused;
then I remembered.
We laughed.
I had thought it was a planet.

See, we planned this.
Earth was no accident.
Science can call us human
if it wants to.
We smile politely
at their tiny constructs.
But we’ve always been more;
molecules and stardust,
formed and unformed,
slipping through their labels
like smoke.

She; Seven,
told me human heaven
is so poorly described
it’s almost comical.
It doesn’t compare
to the brilliance there;
where color is something you feel
and spirit is held
like a sacred stone
that isn’t unbreakable at all.

I inhaled blue,
exhaled purple,
sent healing through the room.
Told her,
“You are free.”
And the tears came
beautiful, expressive, electric.

This mission isn’t complete.
I was meant to understand
delusion, illusion, confusion,
all just layers of the same veil.
Walk through them.
Step over fear
the way warriors avoid spears.

It is finished when you decide it ends.

Back into liquid I went,
body lifting,
mind soaking in the lesson:
what I see;
me…
we…
are molecular hearts
torn apart
and stitched back again.

It’s only a fraction of what happens
when we mend,
become wind,
ascend,
drop the performance,
face the masses
with zero care
for judgment’s tiny grip.

If this doesn’t feel familiar,
it isn’t meant for you.
My truth asks nothing,
accept it or don’t,
I move like weather,
unpredictable and ancient.

We ride the horses,
become their manes,
walk the memories
over and over again,
each time deeper,
where the layers thicken
into libraries.

One free mind at a time
is still a revolution.
The goal is wholeness;
beyond realms,
beyond rules.

I am the helm.
I am gaseous flame.
I light worlds.

And to most,
I am just that girl.
But to the few
who truly see me;
I am the ocean.

Back inside we go,
lungs filling,
souls steady,
preparing
to dive again.

And if you only knew
how fast you become whole
the moment you let fear slip
out of your lungs;
exhaled, transmuted,
turned into presence,
your entire energy
would rise,
shifting clean
into an unstoppable
persistence.

©️Vennie Kocsis

From my cage, holding safety inside.

Here, I yell out with all my might,

“I want out!”

I can no longer stand this land,

Where the darkness is my only friend.

I feel trapped in a world that is not mine.

So, again, I scream,

“I want out!”

A lunatic echoes inside my head,

Invoking an image of a way out:

“Hope’s thin blade is your silver key,

Which will release you from despair,

And let you escape life’s nightmare.”

Holding back tears, I loudly plead,

“I want out!”

In desperation, I follow delusion’s instructions,

Making a straight path down the midline.

I go deep until the color of freedom flows.

Then, as the crimson comes,

I find my release.

I am out.

©️

Leavesdance is ’s debut book, though he has been crafting poetry for more than twenty-five years. Inspired by the voices of Shakespeare, Poe, and Vennie Kocsis, he brings a timeless sensitivity to his work. He is also an avid collector of classic books and has a lifelong love of the sea.

Buy Leavesdance

Mid of night,
The child heard
Approaching footsteps
At the door.

With a slow turn
Of the nob,
The Child Froze.
For she knows
The night time routine,
Of tucking in
And kissing goodnight,
Is at the core
so much more.

In the morn,
The child’s told,
Again, you were found
Sleep walking around.
And what’s with those
Puddles on the floor?”

Through the years
Of never-ending days,
Nothing seems to change,
Except her grades
And personality traits.
Yet, Adults decide
On those to toss aside,
Leave, and ignore,
Puddled on the floor.

Held in a cell,
The child lives,
Ever aware,
Monsters exist.
As the one
In her closet,
Stays the evil
For cover of night.

She’ll awake
To shouts
Over wet linens,
A list of sins,
Plus those,
Puddles on the floor.

Daddy’s little girl
Played football,
Boxing dummy,
TV buddy,
And more.
The child’s best
Produced Red
Puddles on the floor.

She buries many
Of her memories
With unused tears,
As the child becomes
The Family Protector
Into adult years.

Until the fondling
Witnessed by peers,
Stirs A Familiar
Uncomfortableness
And reflexive repress
Deeper inside.
She chose flight,
Again, over fight.
The energy spent
Finds her
Puddled on the floor.

Then, behold
Upon the death
Of her Abusive
Engineers,
No ceremonies
Were held,
Tears shed, nor
Puddles on the floor.

Each year she finds
The child’s voice
Grows harder
To comply,
When Images
And sounds
Creep back
Down the hall
In the middle
Of the night,
Sleep walking,
Rattles of the door,
Night terrors,
Sweats, and those,
Puddles on the floor.

Unable to bear
Responsibility
that she was the cause
Of the Abuse
Suffered by all
Within her family’s walls,
left her,
Puddled on the floor.

She had to face
What happened,
But that would
Mean to fight,
Lift the veil,
Expose the years
Held secret,
And hurt the Family
She protects
With all her might.

Her only option,
The one familiar.
She would allow
The child take
The Flight
Of their life,
Forever ending

The cycling’s,
Puddles on the floor.

The result
Is a river
At the child’s
Adult funeral,
As tears
Overflow
The banks
Pools form
A tragedy
Created from:

Puddles on the Floor

©️

#poetry #poem #poets

Let your work find its place in Liminalines

This is my mother at sixteen. She looks like a forlorn woman inside of a girl. I stare at her face sometimes and try to slip beneath her expression, searching for the thoughts that couldn’t become words. What did she imagine her life would look like? Did she think she’d outrun whatever shadows were already forming behind her? Less than twenty years after this photograph was taken, she would be swallowed by one of the most infamous cults in America, and her children, her legacy, would fracture under the weight of its doctrine. But here, in this moment, what did she want? What did she ache for? Who was she before the storms took her light?

I never really knew. She moved through life like a riddle; dissociative, present, yet always unreachable. When she left this earth in 2007, she was already half-gone, a woman undone by sickness and sorrow, her body breaking down from toxins and denial. Watching her deteriorate was like watching a river swallow itself; slow, tragic, inevitable.

And then this year, I woke with the imprint of a dream viscerally alive in my body and mind. I sat on the edge of my bed, still lucid and held by the startling clarity that I had healed my mother somewhere beyond the veil as I slept. It was a deep knowing I felt. My energy had reached through the seams of dimensions and sat with her; talked with her; told her it was okay to heal. I grabbed my journal, hands trembling, and wrote to catch the feeling before it evaporated. What spilled out of me was this poem.

Have you ever had a dream where you sensed yourself doing shadow work for yourself or others? Tell us about it in the comments!

I’ve always just said what I felt, raw, real, unfiltered, but the truth is, most people don’t actually want that. They say “Be authentic,” but what they really mean is, “Be palatable.” They want the version of you that nods, smiles, and doesn’t challenge their tightly stitched worldview.

Keep it cute. Keep it quiet. Keep it agreeable. Because the moment you get honest, really honest, they flinch. They recoil. They call you difficult, angry, and too much.

What I’ve learned is that many people don’t want the truth. They want comfort. And comfort, for them, often looks like your affirmation of them. Your pain tucked in. Your tears dried before they can see them. Your rage locked in the basement so they don’t have to feel it. They want you to be the idea of you that lives in their head. And when you refuse to perform that script, they’ll turn on you.

So speak anyway. Cry if you need to. Rage if it’s time. Be messy, complicated, gloriously human. Because no matter how careful you perform, someone will still be disappointed so... you might as well be free.

I made this into a handy little graphic for you; perfect for sharing anywhere: social media, a text, your secret Signal chat (don’t even pretend you don’t have one 😂). Spread it around, pay it forward, and remind the world: we are not origami; stop folding yourself up for other people’s comfort.

✨ Explore More of My Work!

If you enjoy what I write here, you might also love my other Substack publications:

🌒 Women Who Stare At Walls – reflective essays on resilience, emotion, and the quiet moments that transform us. It all started here:

Women Who Stare At Walls

Women Who Stare at Walls

For years I’ve been handwriting essays in a journal called Women Who Stare at Walls. It began on a day I caught myself blankly gazing at the paint; mind emptied out, body tired, energy gone. Then the edges of thought started pinging back, and I wrote my first lines, wondering how many other women end up here too: so worn down we drift into a quiet stare…

Read more

7 months ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Vennie Kocsis

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🎨 Paper Paint Blood – a visual and poetic dive into art, collage, and the stories that live inside me. I sometimes live stream myself making collage art or painting while I play music and monologue (ramble on…) like my awkward first live stream:

Paper Paint Blood

My Awkward First Art Live! 😊🤘

This is my first art live, so forgive the sideways video. I’m on a learning curve here! But there will be more lives like this…. making art, music, relaxing our nervous system down together, and I’ll…

Listen now

6 months ago · 2 likes · Vennie Kocsis

Subscribe to Paper Paint Blood

I hope you subscribe and journey deeper with me. Each space offers a unique facet of my creative world that is raw, real, and always from the heart.

Love, Vennie🌸

Sevenlines is independent, reader-supported art.
Your tips and subscriptions help me keep writing these stories.
Thank you for being part of this circle.

If my words moved you, you can support the work below; it truly helps me keep creating.

Support Sevenlines

Then there were the gamers who turned Twitter into X; the ones who have now coded the world’s first Angry Algorithm. The descendants will speak of this one day.

“But do you know of the Angry Algorithm? It drove fine men insane.”

You know the angry algo, right: it sniffs out a sincere post from a writer and immediately slaps it down the feed like, “Nope. Too human. Try outrage next time.”

Meanwhile, I’m over here, just a middle-aged writer holding a half-eaten muffin and a dream, trying to toss my little words into the digital void and find someone who wants to sit with me.🤘

And yet, miracle of miracles, my eye caught shining like a literary lighthouse. Sister - A place where people still read. Where paragraphs aren’t considered a hate crime. Where the algorithm doesn’t ask if I’d like to “monetize my personality.” Where I don’t have to be the REPLY GUY, or answer one line questions or listen to kids in their basement playing Apex Legends scream about the end of the world and 3I/Atlas invasions.

So I took a chance. Thirty days ago, I started building my tiny word house here, muttering to myself, “If I build it, maybe the kindred souls will come.”

And guess what? You did. Over fifty of you beautiful humans showed up, reading, laughing, crying, occasionally sending me messages that make me have an extra cup of morning coffee.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m equal parts thrilled and terrified. Thrilled because I feel seen. Terrified because I might not live up to your expectations. 🥹 But I’ll do my best to exceed them, with equal parts raw seeping heart, inappropriate humor, and bursts of creativity that even surprise me sometimes.

🎨 I did my first art stream today. I don’t know WTF I am doing, but I dared greatly, Brene’! I DARED GREATLY!

Paper Paint Blood

My Awkward First Art Live! 😊🤘

This is my first art live, so forgive the sideways video. I’m on a learning curve here! But there will be more lives like this…. making art, music, relaxing our nervous system down together, and I’ll…

Listen now

6 months ago · Vennie Kocsis

Truly, from the bottom of my slightly frazzled, caffeine-soaked heart: thank you for being here.

My heart is full, my creativity is leaking everywhere (someone get a mop), and I’m so glad you’re here for the glorious mess of it.

Over fifty brave souls smashed that subscribe button like, “Yeah, let’s see what this crazy lady’s rambling about,” and honestly, I’m both shocked and wildly grateful.

Sevenlines is independent, reader-supported art.
Your tips and subscriptions help me keep writing these stories.
Thank you for being part of this circle.

If my words moved you, you can support the work below; it truly helps me keep creating.

Support Sevenlines