Hi everyone! I’m challenging you to write a six line poem with a PUNCH. Take off the readers’ head with an emotional bat. Sometimes the shortest poems are the most impactful, interesting and stick with the reader. Give it a try!

do you love me worse I fear you, for the theatrics of your throat Buzzing upon my skin do I love you worse I have lived and I prefer death Over a life without knowing your hands Copyright ©️ Kimberly Virga 2026

Not every smile is kindness. Not every hand is meant to heal. Some wear halos made of polished words, while hiding storms beneath their sleeves. Discernment is not judgment. It is the quiet lantern of the soul, lighting the path between what glitters and what is truly gold. I've trusted voices that echoed like home, only to find empty rooms. I've walked away from those who shouted, and found peace in whispered truth. Time became my greatest teacher. Pain became an honest friend. Together they taught me that wisdom is earned, not borrowed. So now I listen beyond the words. I watch what actions choose to say. For truth leaves footprints, while deception is forever sweeping them away. And if there is one gift this winding road has given me, it is the courage to see clearly... For discernment is not seeing the world as we wish it to be, but having the strength to see it as it truly is. By Jason Strickland

I wrote this about a year ago when I was going through a tuff time. Some have read it already. A touch, a word, a fleeting glance, A whispered hope, a second chance. The way we treat the ones in pain Can mend the soul or leave a stain. A child who cries in silent fear, A wound ignored, unseen, yet near. A gentle hand, a kind embrace, Can turn the darkness into grace. The doctor mends, the healer sighs, A patient pleads with weary eyes. A single dose, a bandage tight, Yet kindness proves the true respite. For scars are more than flesh and bone, Some linger deep, some stand alone. And how we treat the broken hearts Determines if the healing starts. A sentence laced with bitter steel, Can cut as deep as blades that kill. A careless jest, a sharp critique, Can shake the strong and wound the weak. Yet words, when placed with love and care, Can lift despair from weighted air. A compliment, a simple cheer, Can wipe away the silent tear. How do we treat the ones we meet? With words like daggers, cold and fleet? Or do we gift them warmth and light, And guide them gently through the night? The way we treat the weak and small, Defines the height from which we fall. The beggar left without a name, The outcast bathed in silent shame. A world that turns from pleading eyes, Will find itself where mercy dies. Yet justice, when it stands alone, Is nothing but a heart of stone. To treat with fairness is to blend The hand of law with love’s amend. For punishment with no reprieve Leaves hollow hearts that can’t believe. A second chance, a moment spared, Might show the world someone still cares. And in that light, in fate’s own hand, A shattered soul may learn to stand. The Treatment We Give Ourselves But what of how we treat our skin, Our weary bones, the soul within? Do we demand, yet never rest, And wear our burdens like a vest? The mirror shows a tale unkind, Reflections shaped by judging mind. We speak to self with cruel disdain, And drown in doubt, embrace the pain.

Im feeling blue like brass tunes, weighed down underneath heavy jazz, but I can’t hear the music or understand the muse, just background sound to another outsider here for some amusement; Parking myself to watch the bodies bounce like crickets, the people are cutting up and down the floor with classic moves and intentional switches from ten toes of one foot to their own flow and back again, their movements like life, unscripted. Here the heat escapes and climbs like friction or a static shock, hot like streets underneath summer sunbeams, I’m sweating without participating, perspiring beneath a melancholy looming uncontrollably over me, fighting to avoid feeling defeated or downtrodden, run down and beat up by a life I can’t seem to figure out the moves to; Im circling the spot, obsessing over this mental block, I can’t seem to build with and spiraling with thoughts and questions like: If life’s a game are you playing to win or playing for your enjoyment? If you’re playing for enjoyment how does one afford it? And if you’re playing to win then what is it that reports it and what measurements record it? All around me humanity walks through waves of personal and external struggle, wading against the wake and into an unknown that renders my own dancing feet with an unbearable stagnancy, So here I sit stationary, just a spectator praying tomorrow treats me fairly.