Size / / /

A bouquet of honeyed skin,

you are as I'd imagined.

Our eyes the same, the way we smile.

long legged wild child, little sister.

Too long I've been in exile,

I've paid enough for my misdeeds.

I only wish to come home,

but none believe it. With my name,

a fleet at my command, I own the stars.

Why do you turn away?

The circle worlds are multiple.

It is life, not death, that has no limits.

You tell me you're my brother,

yet you don't know us.

Born a millennium before,

You cannot understand our ways.

When you were banished to the stars,

our sun was always rising.

Now it sits above the westmost mountain.

Ancestor or myth, you come too late

to save us from the end.

Our cherished histories endure

within the sea and frag,

our lives a part of the elemental clock—

why would we ever wish to leave?

Soon this last ring of time,

my small part of it, will disappear.

Yet it is mine, and all that's come and gone

in this infinitely small space

is just for me.

So I beg you take your ships away,

leave us be.




Marge Ballif Simon free lances as a writer-poet-illustrator for genre and mainstream publications such as Nebula Awards 32, Strange Horizons, Flashquake, Space & Time, Dreams & Nightmares, Aoife’s Kiss, Dark Regions, Fantasy Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, EOTU, Tales of the Unanticipated. She has illustrated three Stoker award collections. Her illustrated poetry collection, “Artist of Antithesis” was a Stoker finalist in 2004.
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9 Feb 2026

“I’ve never actually visited the pā before,” she said out loud. “Is this where they gather lāʻī to make the pūʻolo?” she asked. “Yes,” Benny responded, glancing to see where Nanea was pointing. “Here and in other places as well. Many of these ti have been growing for decades now.” She paused for a moment. “I think about all the work you guys do, you know, up in those offices, and I think that all of that work actually starts from right here, in the ground, all covered in the earth and the pōhaku and the ti. Most people don’t even know it, but it all starts right here.
sometime in the night, we heard rocking and knocking and rapping and tapping, a million trillion tiny feet
The triangles bred and twisted, replicating themselves.
Issue 2 Feb 2026
By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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