"The Hollow Mother" - Sebastian Michaels

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Dried Out
by Patrick Granger

I found him
folded
asleep without a breath,
curled like a question
no one ever asked.
His fingers,
bone-white and bare,
still reached for something
just out of reach.
(I felt that.)

The sand swallowed his shape.
No name.
No trail.
Only heat
and that journal
half-torn,
half-waiting.

I turned pages like a thief,
as if I’d stolen his last thoughts.

"The moon blinked.
I waited.
No answer.
The stars lied.
The wind didn’t care."

I read until the ink cracked.
I read until my hands shook.
I don’t know if it was sorrow
or recognition.
I sat beside him
not out of kindness,
but because
I was afraid
to stand again.

He had a death
I could understand.
Unwitnessed.
Unloved.
Undone.

What did it mean
to be the last to hold his words?
To find a ghost
and see yourself?

No wind came.
No voice.
Just sun,
and silence,
and a body
not mine
but maybe
too close.

If the Stars Had Hands
by Patrick Granger

If the stars had hands, they’d gather,
fold themselves into your name,
scatter light like vows unspoken,
soft and warm as window flame.
They’d spin a sky in quiet loops,
until all constellations knew:
every orbit I have followed
was the long way back to you.

I’ve met silence in the morning,
watched it stretch across your skin,
like the sun was made for touching
only where your breath had been.
And I’ve listened to your heartbeat
as if time itself were stilled,
trapped between two words unspoken
and the hush of being filled.

I don’t need a map or anchor,
not the years or grains of sand.
I would trade the world’s last morning
just to brush against your hand.
If we vanished into vapor,
fled the clocks, unstrung the moon,
I would find you, love, I promise,
even lost inside a tune.

I would know you in the darkness,
by the shape your soul would trace,
by the pull that bends the heavens
to the curve of just your face.
Even if we’re born as strangers,
from the dust, through dream, anew,
I would find you, always find you,
and I’d fall in love with you.

— P.

The Mother of the Hollow
from KRFP (Broadcast 12:06 AM)

[Faint static blends with the sound of wind chimes. Soft music hums low, like glass singing.]

HOST:
We’re back, dear nightfolk, eyes aglow,
beneath a sky too bright to know.
It’s twelve-oh-six, the second round
The Crown still burns without a sound.
Seven stars, an ocean crown,
hung on night’s dark silken gown.
I swear it shimmered like it knew.

GUEST:
You’re not alone in thinking so.
Across the ridge, the sightings grow.
Some say it spins, some say it cries,
though none have heard it with their eyes.
It lingers low, just past the trees,
like breath that never quite can freeze.
A watching hush in deepest hue.

HOST:
And beautiful, I will confess
like sorrow dressed in Sunday best.
It’s not a thing to fear, not quite.
Just makes you feel a touch too light.
A ghostly calm, a hollow charm…
and every night it grows more warm.
You’d think the sky had love to lend.

GUEST:
Or memories it wants to mend.
You know the type, a lullaby
that hums before you say goodbye.
There’s comfort in its colored flame,
but something missing just the same.
Some ache the stars won’t let you name.

HOST:
Well, the phone lines hum but stay unsaid.
No one calls, but dreams instead.
Folks out west, they’ve gone quite still.
Whole towns gone quiet in the hills.
Letters come, half words, half ink
"She walked into the dusk, I think."
And then the trail goes cold and gone.

GUEST:
They vanish like a whispered song.
Their homes untouched, their coffee warm,
but no one steps back through the storm.
And some folks say, the ones who hear,
that lullabies drift close, then near.
They say the trees lean in to see…

HOST:
…And something waits beneath the tree.
Now, now, don’t fret, dear listeners true.
We’re safe and snug at KRFP.
The tower’s tall, the fire’s lit.
But still, I feel the edge of it.
Like something brushed across the wire.

GUEST:
Like breath that doesn’t quite expire.
Like hands once warm, now made of rain
the type of love that leaves a stain.
You’ll feel it when the seventh nears,
but beauty masks what beauty fears.
And lullabies, too, know to lie.

HOST:
So gaze up high, don’t ask us why.
Just know The Crown is watching you.
So make a wish, or maybe two
but do not wish for what is gone,
for some things hum an older song.
And some who listen, don’t return.

GUEST:
Some hearts forget, some spirits burn.
And if you hear a soft refrain
like sleep, like ash, like summer rain
just hum along, but do not stray.
You may not come back quite the same.

[Static fades into the chime of a distant music box. A brief silence.]

HOST:
That’s it for now.
Keep your lanterns lit.
Keep your thoughts like starlight
clear, but never too bright.
We’ll see you tomorrow,
if the night lets go.

GUEST:
And if you don’t, then dream us so.

HOST:
This is The Signal Below.
Stay safe. Stay strange.
And never hum alone.

[Signal ends with a gentle, dissonant chord.]

was it me?
by Duskbloom

i picked violets for you
(the ones that grow in shade)
the stems snapped easy
but you never came to take them

you said love like it was
air
like breathing it meant nothing
or everything
i don’t know anymore

did i leave?
was i taken?
no door, no wind, just
a slip
and then the dark
the quiet kind,
not evil
but watching

i kept calling (did you hear it?)
i said your name with petals in my mouth
threw marigolds into the void
(my favorite)
they never fell

i waited by the place with the cracked stone
where the moss grows in the shape of your hand
but no footsteps
no lantern
no breath that wasn’t mine

you said we were
you said
we were real

was i just something soft
to bloom and be looked at?
plucked, pressed, and forgotten?

i thought
we were sun-warm and rooted
but maybe
maybe you just liked the way
i smelled like earth
and nothing else

did you love me
or only the way i
wilted
quietly
for you?

i’m still here
somewhere behind
what you don’t look at
arms full of crushed orchids
still asking

why didn’t you come?

Hollow Whispers
from The Cosmic StarDuster

I took no soul.
There was nothing to steal,
just a flicker,
a trembling wick from the lantern
you all call "life,"
barely lit and already fading.

You were dust once,
scattered bright across the breathless void.
I simply returned you
to what you never should have left.
Ash to ash,
stardust into root.

They call it cruelty,
to bloom you where no eyes can see,
to press your face from moonlight
and fold your scent into frost.
But sin must be silenced
in the throat of the earth.

You speak of love.
I have seen your love rot cities.
Watched it drown children.
You crown yourselves with stars,
then wonder why the sky forgets you
when it rains teeth instead of light.

There is no grief here.
Only purpose.
What writhes will wither,
what weeps will feed.
And from that weeping
comes a bloom no mouth may name.

Do not ask me to return what was never yours.
I do not answer to pleading.
I do not bend to longing.
The flower stays rooted,
forever turned from the moon,
that cursed, watching eye.