• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Poetry Vanquished

The World Between the Words
And it came to pass that

From the ash

Of fear and grief—out of its path

Rose scaled jaws

Blood-red claws

Not born of fear but fear, reborn

It had never died, only lied to hide

Its presence.



It waited, as pain does, to claim more pain—

Not just her own, but from those she’d sewn new seeds of hope

In her face, in his, she saw that beast

Creature formed from hurt and hate and shame and shame and shame and shame

Come to slay she who thought it slain,

Lay waste to that which she thought she made

But all’s a mirage disintegrated with one dart,

Smoke that drifts not to heaven but back to her heart

A story to bury the truth, fiction to hinder hurt’s reveal

Long ago she vanquished herself to keep the demon concealed.
 

Further Articles from the Author Platform

Latest Articles By Litopians

  • Winging it
    ‘I could never write a book,’ a friend said to me recently. She meant it as a compliment and I a ...
  • The Monster We Were Promised
    I tutor a small group of Year Five boys who love boardgames (let’s call them the Gamer Boys). We†...
  • Character Building
    I’m sure most of us have felt the excitement when we meet a new character. I wonder, do yours arri ...
  • Plain Grocery Stores
    Right up the road from the Weaverland Auction, there’s an unnamed farm stand, its open front cover ...
  • Out and About when Autumn Leaves had Fallen
    Late November 2025… Mrs Treaclechops and I enjoyed a 5-day break in Pembrokeshire. We know the are ...
  • Twice as Sexy as Madonna
    When Richard and Cathie got together in the mid-eighties, they both thought it would last forever. T ...
  • If Plot Were an Artisan
    A vast and echoey chamber crisscrossed by delicate strands. PLOT hangs suspended from the high ceili ...
What Goes Around
Comes Around!
Back
Top