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Are you there?
Where are you now?

I’ve been searching for you since it began
It seems I lost you a lifetime ago, and this mine field is long.

I thought going through hell with you would mean something.
I gave you all I had,
Even that tiny corner of my soul I wasn’t using just then.

So where are you now? I thought we were supposed to fight the dragons together,
but I’ve been splattered too many times to trust
And too many friends are gone

So I wait and load, load and wait.
I’ve been broken, too, but it won’t matter much longer.
This leg I drag won’t hold me back from the firestorm.

They’re coming, now, and I don’t mind, I’m numb to terror.
And used to standing all alone.
I locked out the wasteland, but they’ll come.

Claws will scrape the metal, fangs will part for the howl.
They’ll charge, and rend, and batter down this flimsy shield.

Ready, ready and waiting
With more fire than they can imagine.
Monsters at the door,
but I will blaze a wall for them when they break it down.

And when the guns are spent, there’s more, far more in me.
It’s time to burn bright, one last time.
One last fight,

Break it down!
I’ve been waiting too long



Marlane Quade Cook is an emerging writer who dabbles in a variety of genres, including poetry, speculative fiction, literary fiction/fantasy, and a few less easily defined. A former visual artist and classical ballet teacher, she is adapting to a change of lifestyle after several progressions of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) left her with decreased mobility and function. Marlane and her husband/caregiver Jonathan parent two children who also have EDS. She is volunteer director of a small, inclusive community ballet program in Northwest Montana.

social media: https://www.facebook.com/inkyunkindness/
blog: https://inkyunkindness.wordpress.com/
Current Issue
31 Mar 2025

We are delighted to present to you our second special issue of the year. This one is devoted to ageing and SFF, a theme that is ever-present (including in its absence) in the genre.
Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw.
does the comb understand the vocabulary of hair. Or the not-so-close-pixels of desires even unjoined shape up to become a boat
The birds have flown long ago. But the body, the body is like this: it has swallowed the smaller moon and now it wants to keep it.
now, be-barked / I am finally enough
how you gazed on our red land beside me / then how you traveled it, your eyes gone silver
Here, I examine the roles of the crones of the Expanse space in Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, and Leviathan Falls as leaders and combatants in a fight for freedom that is always to some extent mediated by their reduced physical and mental capacity as older people. I consider how the Expanse foregrounds the value of their long lives and experience as they configure the resistance for their own and future generations’ freedom, as well as their mentorship of younger generations whose inexperience often puts the whole mission in danger.
In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston welcome Farah Mendlesohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.
Issue 24 Mar 2025
Issue 17 Mar 2025
Issue 10 Mar 2025
By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 3 Mar 2025
Issue 24 Feb 2025
Issue 17 Feb 2025
Issue 10 Feb 2025
By: Alexandra Munck
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 27 Jan 2025
By: River
Issue 20 Jan 2025
Strange Horizons
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Jan 2025
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