Swallow more than you say.
Fight with fists and chicken feathers.
Board games and a high charade.
The cheap murder has turned to leather.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Periphery
heirlooms and souvenirs
bundles of diaries, dated and
dog-eared
dust of a moth's wings
alarm clocks and morning sings
secured you like a promise ring
my eternal beloved at the town's spring fling
at our puppet show, these are the things —
the secret moans and the howlings —
our closed-door hinges have failed to swing
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Retroshade
Residues and overdues,
a library of lates and past dues.
Drunk off the fumes.
Secondhand smoke.
Colossal loss.
Intuitive hoax.
Off with his head!
Lead him astray!
It was never what I wanted to say.
A flock of sparrows hide
from this threatening bird of prey.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
But what if I Do?
Echoes repeat
of mental tethers and fetters.
The cynics and the rebels
and their questions— cool and clever.
With their vows of never say never
and especially not forever.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Rib
We place an asterisk on our convictions.
The mass is gone,
now we heal from the incision.
The absence of the abscess of you.
The incense, the prayers,
the rows of wooden pews.
Holy mass that smudges the mass.
Hollow in places an organ should be.
Attacking
you
is
attacking
me.
Self-inflicted autoimmunity.
You were never the appendix
but the chapters of the story.
The lead-up to the orgasm—
a psychedelic epiphany.
Royalty.
Like morsels to the tongue.
And notes of vanilla bean.
But hell has made me
a wild feathered thing.
These wings bluff freedom
with these tongue-tied tetherings.
The thought of you was a kiss on the hand.
That lucid love,
even in a dream,
had given you a tan.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Tentacles
One severed,
now I’m pulled by seven.
In peripheral, rearview spaces.
Blooming in places.
Hopping out of seas.
Mourning doves
landing on trees.
A haunted hymn and a folded knee.
The shape of milk in a cup of tea.
Distance is a hotel wall.
With secret moans discerned from the hall.
Closing the door still makes one hear.
Far is the wall yet the sounds are near.
Time wasted waited.
A
single
cup
of
coffee:
inflated.
Is it enough—
to be aged and dated?
Will these lunar pulls
and responding waves
ever be validated?
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Sorry, We’re Never Closed
My legs may run
but my heart stays.
Painting gold on ceramic decays.
“Out!”
with the animals,
the dog house,
outdoors.
Shoes outside
but your ghost indoors.
I clear my throat to spit it out.
You’re still within
when you’re without.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Deep End
Speak to me from the bottom of the ocean.
Where words are washed and always true.
I talk to your skin via fingers and lotions.
Massaging away your tidal blues.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Time Travel
Joints stiffen.
Hairs turn gray.
Today
presses
play
on wrinkled yesterdays.
Were we expirations
or jarred fermentations?
A dusty shelf life that defies the dated?
Have we turned into emails
of courtesies and belated?
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Taste It
First the roar and then the fall.
She bites and then massages the balm.
Body like an apothecary—
abuse her blood
then taste your own remedy.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
The Aftertaste
Retrospective redemptions,
written and
updated.
The audience grants applauses,
only afterwards
and
belated.
But you have the original—
fangs out,
naked.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Use Your Claws
Chapters of virginity—
it’s time to get your nails dirty.
Hurls and throws
that dig beneath
the snow.
Awaiting the thaw.
Whiteness is a gauze.
Rip out
your fucking claws.
Puncture me.
Paint your bland modesty.
Our novel of farewells
had never dared a greeting.
We did the long lusting—
it’s time for the eating.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Blood Orange
The feeding is foreign
and filling
and fattening.
When Michelins fed me crumbs
and salt.
I hide behind an ordinary orange
when your dull knife
says it all.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
CURB YOUR HEART
Trimmed
and
twisted
like suburban topiary.
No flesh and blood
underneath his finery.
It beats for you and it’s embarrassing.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Say It With Your Mouth
Words arrive on my plate
with bite marks.
Buzz
cut.
Truth swallowed.
The center hollowed.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2025
Til Death
She’s a diluted essence.
Repel her presence
then long for it
in absence.
Exchange vows of abstinence—
in sickness and in limerence.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2024
Pearl
My ocean song wails
but you hear the wrong sirens.
In melancholy I steep
after brushing you away with a violent sweep.
Blaming the strings for the nets we’ve woven.
An amalgamation of oceans.
Hills and lights.
I travel then leave my jewelry behind.
We break so we can fix.
We yearn so we can lick.
Holding it in the mouth
to dine on the decadence.
Immortalize me.
No chewing.
No swallowing.
Who will I be when you paint my pristine?
Will the mystery die once you’ve colored my clean?
I long to be the sun that opens your bud of leaves.
I have come out of many closets
of secrets and beliefs.
At times the magician,
but lately the mortician.
Shape-shifting like the Bobinsana tree.
When will life finally bend for me?
When will I
make a dent
and
split the sea?
When will I stop
with all the burying?
I returned a proxy.
Pulled off many faces.
Hijabbed my head with shawls and laces.
Descended far too many staircases.
Adjacent.
The muffle between radio stations.
Looking down at the carcasses,
we grieve the annihilation.
I’m polished now,
but who will care to wear me?
They can no longer afford luxuries.
Not in this economy.
The ocean has swallowed up my jewelry.
I speak the language of epiphanies.
I dive into the fearful unknown
but fear the vast landscapes of knowns.
I’ve dreaded every elevator.
And everything familiar
for fear of its disfigurement.
No wonder I isolated myself on islands
and have gargoyles on my shoulders.
Distance makes the tea grow colder.
Yet no amount of distance can make us distant.
I’ve crossed oceans.
I’ve prophesied.
Seen unusual sights on ordinary train rides.
I’ve sensed movement in our unwanted pauses.
And I’ve stepped out of many closets.
I stopped the hiding so you could finally seek.
So tell me now,
who will
dare to wear
me?
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2024
Decadence
I was better a reverie.
A melancholic maybe.
Wilderness locked inside a menagerie.
A change of thought the night before marrying.
They settle for meals
yet lust over delicacies.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2024
Dilettante
You dabbling dilettante.
When it’s you who ghosts,
it’s me who haunts.
Copyright © Stephanie Khio 2024
Saudade
Steeped in the exotic.
Jacaranda trees.
Fado.
Mandolins.
Blue-tiled history.
Weeping symphonies,
cobblestone streets.
And after sunset,
the green parakeets.
Strolling midnights,
the Neptunian dream.
Heartbeat of Guilty.
Avenue of Liberty.
© Stephanie Khio 2024