POETRY BY NATE RITCHIE

Nate Ritchie is a horror fiction writer, journalist, and poet from Ohio. When he isn’t writing or researching a story, he can be found exploring the wilderness.

His work has been published in The Helix, Change Seven Magazine, FLARE Magazine and DarkWinter Literary Magazine.

GARDEN GOSSIP

I know all about you.
The plants tell me
every last secret you keep
buried in your chest.
They listen, always,
and the world remembers.
Grandma said it was okay
to talk to the garden
so long as the garden
never talks back.
She asked if I could hear
the treacherous whispers
of the red snapdragons.
“No,” I lied,
my first lie of many.
Not nearly as many
as the lies you’ve told.
The plants lie most of all,
but they speak so sweetly.
I can’t stop listening,
and I can’t help remembering
all your awful little deeds.

ELECTRIC GHOSTS

By now, you’ve probably seen one—
an electric ghost.
Lost among your friends and followers,
haunting your digital memories.
It’s a fate we’ll all meet eventually.
You can try to delete your presence,
but your face will appear in a group photo,
your voice heard in an audio log or video.
Whether we wish it or not,
we are all forever connected,
echoes trapped permanently online,
What a shame
or perhaps a blessing that
the you in the video
won’t even know you’re dead.

THE SAPPHIRE WEB

Jeweled spiders crawl upon my translucent skin.
They spin me a sapphire web where
I might dream undisturbed.
I cared for their fallen mother,
a bold jumper perhaps too bold.
Now they guard me in my loneliness.
They honor me like a sacred idol,
my white-walled prison a glittering nest.
I’m no one worth honoring, but
their silk befits a divine slumber.
So I drift into the realm of dreams,
a holy place they call Paradise.
I pray for the coveted illusion
of human companionship.
I pray for the spectral touch
of another deific body.