10 hours, several hundred layers, like 15 seperate files and one procreate storage warning later, I present to you my sixth colour for @green-with-envy-phandom-event, this beautiful Ember stained glass lineart by the amazing @ovytia-art
And some alt line/background versions under the cut
I decided to do a collage using one of the pictures of the sunset I took while flying the other day.
Idk when the last time I do a collage was, so this was a pretty fun exercise, even if I was kinda done with it by the time I got to the background pieces 🫠
ofc i had to kick off with one of @ovytia-art's stained glass pieces bc these make me a lil feral. i looove stained glass and i just recently figured out a cool way to texture them. this ended up lookin a lil more 70s than i'd intended but i loove the overall effect. i think that's the fastest ive ever done a lineart
I've always wanted to depict chronic pain or waves of pain with red circle-ish pattern, well There's finally a piece where I can use it! Super happy! It's the big chunks of circle shapes centered on him, and they're supposed to represent radiation & radiation pain!
Also I have no idea how to represent the "human turning into ghost" theme outside of his body, I used red blood transitioning to green blood in the end and it just looks like his human blood was blasted out of him lol, I hope I get it across
No actual poetry in this one, just finishing off the framing device. The whole collection is now posted to AO3.
"...And it appears Ms. Sanchez is our final presenter today." Mr. Lancer checked the clock. "And with just five minutes left! Perfect timing. Ms. Sanchez, if you would?"
Paulina smiled, grabbed a brown paper bag from under her desk, and sauntered up to the front of the room. She set the bag on Avery's desk, forcing them to pull their notebook into their lap.
"I saved the best for last so none of you would have to try to follow me," she said, beaming. "My poem is written for mi amor, Phantom, of course." Sam sighed in the back, but Paulina ignored her, reaching into her bag and pulling out a photo box printed with flowers. "I brought along some presentation aids in this box." She brushed the empty bag onto the floor and set the box on the desk, and then, with a coy look and deliberate slowness, pulled off the lid.
Then she put a hand to her cheek in faux surprise. "Oh! It's another box." A ripple of attention spread through the room telegraphed by the murmur of students sitting up, or starting to hurridly pack up their things.
"Oh great," Danny moaned.
"Pauli..." Star said, both a warning and a question.
"Ms. Sanchez, I will remind you—"
"I wonder what could be inside~"
"—that if you summon a ghost to avoid an assignment, that is an instant fail—" Danny let out a cold gasp of mist.
"A third box!"
"BEWARE!"
Danny slid further down in his seat. "Eeyup. Here we go."
Val pulled something lime green and chrome out of her backpack and strode up to the front of the room with it wrapped around her hand, and before anyone could process the scene, she pulled back an arm and decked the Box Ghost. He smacked into the whiteboard with a spurt of green dripping from his nose.
While he was busy investigating his rearranged face, Val flipped up Paulina's nested box lure and crushed it to the desk with another knuckle-duster punch, the brief flash of red ectoskeleton up her arm barely noticable. She gave it a few more hits for good measure to crush what corners survived. When the boxes were pancakes, she tossed the flattened carnage on the floor in front of Boxy and barked, "No boxes. Get. Out."
He turned invisible and dribbled green across the room before phasing through the windows and (presumably) flying away.
Val turned back to the class, non-plussed. She held up the anti-ecto knuckle dusters with a casual gesture. "A GIW guy dropped them. ...What? It's the Box Ghost."
On the right side of the room, Mikey started chanting, "Red. Hawk! Red. Hawk!" Half of the room took it up, with the A-Listers (minus Kwan) sitting in awkward silence in the middle of it all. Paulina slowly thawed out of her shock.
"NO!" she yelled over the chant. "Phantom was supposed to come to save me! And then I was going to read him my poem, and he'd fall for me, and we'd start dating and get married—!"
The bell rung. Danny stuffed his notebook into his bag and hustled out of the room, his friends right behind him.
"Dude, I can't beleive you wrote that whole thing in class."
"I can't beleive that you were able to stall that long. You guys saved my ass."
"It was nice to see everyone actively participating," Sam said with a soft smile. Tucker cut a glare at her.
"Blood blossoms?"
"Look, I blocked most of it out afterwards! I'm still working through it. I gotta go check some places to make sure they're really—"
Danny stuffed his bag through the door of his locker. "Hey, I'm going to go check on Boxy while you fight about that, ok?" He gave them a little salute and ran for the bathroom.
Tucker sighed. "Well. He's lived to fight another marking period."
Danny wandered to the front of the room like a plastic bag dragged by a light breeze, his legs steady only because they'd disconnected from his brain. He still had that deer-in-headlights look as he turned to face the class, like his Pavlovian response to bolt to the bathroom was a hair's breath from kicking in and whisking him away.
"Um," he said, voice cracking, "it's in free verse?"
Sam mimed a deep breath and smiled at him from the back. Tucker gave him a thumbs up. Danny locked eyes on his papers and let the hasty words swell up his throat and over his tongue like water, slowly finding his rhythm as the lines lapped against the walls.
I perch on the banister and look down into a still house,
A living room in miniature, doll-like.
Stale air smells like the summer I was 8,
Something indelibly Us leeching from the carpet, or walls.
The smell that can only emerge when we are gone,
Our home shut up like a box.
This emptiness feels like you.
Here is a version of me, a tapestry,
Of a moment, and a moment, and a moment
Shuttled through time and bound in white string.
A houseplant left to yellow and stretch from a dark end table
As our furniture collects dust.
You live in hypotheticals
In equations and circuits and graphs—
And perhaps I learned that from you
And wove myself into myth.
Now, the ghost of us sleeps below
Encased in solder-smoke and chrome.
You built a rocket ship inside-out.
As I sit in our mausoleum, the orange gloam of sunset
Grows from the window across the dingy floor.
And a vision out of the past— my sister glows like fire in that light
In cheap bangles and striped socks,
Feet kicking in the air as she reads on the rug.
She rolls her eyes at me, but I lay down next to her anyway.
I use the cover of her book to pin my star map flat
So I can trace the constellations.
I will not break the silence, only feel the thud... thud
Through the floor as she taps her feet, deep in thought.
We exist in a bubble of warmth.
I used to beg you for stories of constellations and cosmonauts.
That far-flung dark, beautiful and hostile and unknown,
Was my siren's call, not so unlike yours.
How strange it is to be spun from an essence
That has become my opposite,
To be made and destroyed in the same breath.
Did Clotho weave my life backwards, a chiral pair to yours?
For one instant I held the heavens in my left hand.
My catasterism— blast shadows etched across the walls.
Am I interesting to you now?
If only the stars would catch us as we fall,
And usher gently in that good night.
Charon nor Orion saw their poisoned stings.
Atropos snipped, and they fell unawares.
Now I ask, do you believe in the Fates?
Ticking down in our clockwork universe.
Does there exist a sky with no constellations?
But here the whole menagerie is loose
With Cetus in the lead.
You build blast doors over my deepest place
And see if they will hold.
Come, dam up the infinity behind them.
You think you can close the hole you made,
But you only seal yourselves into our family crypt.
See? I have already stepped through.
I go to the threshold and open the doors.
I stand on the shore to cast the ashes,
Let them sink into the tide.
Loss is in our nature. Now I know
And I am trying to let go.
I can't contain you.
I am only an echo of your voice.
I am only the parts of you that didn't hurt to keep.
One thread at a time, I cut myself away.
What white string is left, you can have.
...A stillness lingered after his voice fell off into which Lancer murmured, "You wrote that today?"
This one's my favorite of the year, I'm really proud of it.
"...Thank you Mia, that was very creative. I don't think I've ever seen a student fit three poetic devices into a haiku before." Mr. Lancer glanced to the clock in the back. "Any more volunteers?"
Danny had scratched down sprawling lines in fits and starts, only to grab a second page. It was unclear if he'd scrapped a first draft or was continuing, and Sam didn't want to ask and interrupt the creative process. She looked around the room, and sensing the tide of interest waning, she finally raised her hand.
"I'd like to go, Mr. Lancer."
She focused on the solid weight of her boot soles as she walked to the front. The A-Listers were still tittering, but they'd been whispering back and forth the entire class. Sam was trying not to let it get to her, but it felt sharper now that it was her turn. She was a little nervous, truth be told— she probably should have written an extra poem about something frivolous. She probably should have pulled Danny and Tucker aside and told them about the blood blossoms before presenting.
She'd meant to.
She should have anticipated Danny's predicament and not left that conversation for the five minutes before class.
But here she was.
"So, um. I've been workshopping this poem for a while actually. It's about that time that plants took over the town? It's uh." And here's the rub. "It's told from the plants' perspective." Sam's gaze skirted around the corner her friends sat in, avoiding Tucker.
Paulina's scoff carried over the quiet shuffle of bodies. "Of course she'd take the plants' side."
"Shh!" Kwan leaned forward in his seat. "She's really good! Like, creepy, but good."
And, strangely, hearing that helped.
Sam took a quiet breath and stood a little taller. "The title is Honeysuckle Thorns." She let her hands fall to her sides. She didn't need the paper.
Seed growth, new leaf
Turning to the daylight heat
Wispy fibers spun and white
Cling to crevice in the street
Hot air stings with tar and bleach
Water rush or scarcely reach
Crack the choked earth, make a way
Through to silence underneath
Cold and packed and over-paved
World forgotten as a grave
I can make new life of these
I can build, a lost place saved
Once a forest, once a moor
Once estuary, eons before
Every fibre ages past
Is still within my seedroom store
Deeptime memory, centuries mine
Algae to moss, up from the brine
Horsetail, cycads, ginkgo, pine
Flowers unnamed, bright and fine
And every crawling, chewing beast
Has never bid our growth to cease
Come, oh Green, and take your place.
□ □ □ □
Up from night, under neon glow
Quiet as a spider's feet
Through foundation, along pipes
From blue of moonlight to blue of screens
Rattle of AC, hum of fridge,
Whirl of fan, thump of earbuds
Eyes full, ears full, mouths full
Who could hear? Who could see? Until:
Heavy fragrance, honey-sweet
And we, sewn deep in green reverie...
▣▣▣▣
Welcome back, apes.
Come home to the trees that made you.
~*~
What?
What pest is this?
Biting, grinding, sickle cold
Beasts awake, beasts dead,
Beasts, beasts, beasts!
Savagery is not your domain alone—
Remember now my thorns!
Oleander, manchineel
Foxglove, hogweed, nettle-sting
Urushiol, quinine,
Capsaicin, tannins, atropine
Swollen drops of resin bleed
Thorns and trichomes, raphides
Every defense, try them all
Last, most desperate, salt the earth
With blood blossom—! That vilest seed
Might prove the only poison needed
Slow to bloom, and sewn too late
Outlive my need, my dormant hate
But one day you will end this deed
Go forth, my child, pierce his lungs
and make him BLEED.
"Repetition, simile, personification."
Kwan clapped with gusto in an otherwise silent room.
Sam finally let herself look at the back corner. Tucker's flat glare told her there would be words later.
Mr. Lancer was trying hard to keep his praise measured, but it was noise that slipped off her brain. She turned in her paper and hurried back to her seat.
"They won't germinate for a century anyway," she muttered as she settled next to Tucker.
"And how long have you known about this?"
Danny dropped his pencil and flipped his page back to the front, rereading. The paper trembled a little in his hands.
There was a pause in the ambient noise of the classroom. "Last call for volunteers," Mr. Lancer said. "Going once, going twice... And we will go back to alphabetical order." He took a few minutes to scan through his roster, checking off names as he went.
"And next we have... Mr. Fenton." He looked up and found Danny in his usual spot. "Are you ready?"
Danny shoved back his chair and stood, gathering his pages. "Yeah," he said breathlessly. "I am."