‘You Stand In A Long Hallway’

Tamizh Ponni VP is an ambivert and a stoic art buff who loves to express her skills through literature, visual arts and music. She is an IB educator and sees learning as a life-long process. Her stories were featured in 2 anthology books, "Mia" and "Varna". Tamizh's articles, poems and paintings have also been published in many digital journals and educational blogs. Tamizh spends most of her free time painting, reading, writing articles, stories and poems, playing piano and watching documentaries/movies.

You Stand In A Long Hallway

You stand in a long hallway but 

you don’t see the walls 

       don’t see

            the floor of centipede legs or

            the ceiling of cricket chirps hung

together by grapevines. 

You stand on a floor of bird beaks mummified

in stone and amber fossils of wings

buried in the wind. Do you see

the lights above you? Lightning bugs

suspended from puffs of smoke?

Do you see 

the moon above them painted

silver against the atmosphere?

What does it all mean? 

Only you can

say. You built this place. 

       You

won’t open your eyes.

Riley Danvers is a bisexual, nonbinary, and disabled poet living in Portland, Oregon. Their poetry has been published in Z Publishing House, Silkworm, Clackamas Literary Review, Other Worldly Women Press, Chasing Shadows, Wingless Dreamer Publication, Poets Choice, Fox Paw Literary Blog, The Endeavor: Maiden Voyage, Wingless Dreamer Publications, and the anthology MOSAIC. Riley graduated with their M.F.A. in Poetry from Willamette University in 2021, and completed their M.A. in Literature from Mercy College in 2023. They are currently pursuing an M.S. in Professional Writing from NYU. Their debut book of poetry, Even the Air, Too Heavy, was published by First Matter Press in 2022.