Whispers and Echoes

Hello | Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

October 29, 2025

The color is gone, sucked away by despair. The bridge once festooned with bouquets of bougainvillea, hibiscus and sweet smelling gardenia, now lay barren and alone.

Step, one step onto the previously sturdy bridge, is followed by sounds of snapping and cracking and decay beneath tentative feet.

This world is gray, desolate, parched by neglect and careless, carefree use. Not use, abuse. The heavy logs lay in ruin beside the swaying walkway. Once they were the sturdy foundation of all that was healthy and beautiful.

Midway along the trestle, connecting what is with what was I stop, calling out, “Hello?”

Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris lives in Southport, NC. Published in Whisper’s & Echoes, 50 Give or Take, Visual Verse, Spillwords and in Wounds I Healed. Honorable Mentioned in Tales from the Moonlit Path 2021 Halloween Challenge. Gypsie-Ami has recently completed a chapbook merging her poetry and photography titled, Reflection’s of a Woman’s Life.

https://gypsieswritingmusingsquotesgripes.wordpress.com/

Names | Crispina Kemp

October 27, 2025

I have no name and yet they seek
Rummaging through the ancient texts
Digging into ancestral myths
They throw at me this, and this, and this
But every name is a distant miss
I have no name
I don’t play that game
Names belong to their dumpster world
Yet ever at me their names they’ve hurled

Crispina is a writer who by her own admission is obsessed with the weird, the unlikely, the mythical and paranormal. She also has a deep love and respect for the land of her birth where she’s often seen ‘walking her camera’.

https://twitter.com/ineebrown51

https://www.amazon.com/author/crispinakemponamazon

Call for submissions…Photo Prompt – Bridge

October 25, 2025

Whispers and Echoes is currently open to submissions of short poetry and flash fiction inspired by the following photo:

Submission Guidelines:

Only poetry and flash fiction inspired by the photo prompt above will be accepted for this call.
Our usual submission guidelines apply: flash fiction in 100 words or under and poetry in 10 lines or less. The full guidelines can be found here. Please read them before submitting.
For this call, please submit a maximum of two poems, pieces of flash fiction, or a combination of the two.
Please state the following in the subject line: Photo Prompt Bridge– Your Name
Submissions open: 25 October 2025
Submissions close: 15 November 2025
Accepted submissions will be posted on the site from the end of October and into November.
Please send your submissions to: deardreamingspirit@gmail.com

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Home | Egerue Chioma Jane

October 24, 2025

Of everything real, you were the most—most of all, the first.
Inside the time of absolute, and of everything safe,
where cold dull tiles feel like green grass.
The sun staggers through your window, you like it,
its bright, blissful burn tainting your skin.
Its walls shield you from the world, calm and peaceful inside.
Where you can be you again, for real.
No beautiful masks of people you like or don’t.
You call it home.

My name is Egerue Chioma Jane, a 20-year-old Nigerian poet, writer, and storyteller. I love to read and write — it’s where I feel most at home, surrounded by words that let me be myself.

I Dance | Crispina Kemp

October 20, 2025

I dance a trance to the beating drum
I tread the threads, I circle around
I weave in and weave out of the yawning years
I dance to that drum and have no cares

My feet drum the ground
An ancient power to be born
I call forth the bear, my spirit, my guide
I change my steps, no stumble. I glide

https://twitter.com/ineebrown51

https://www.amazon.com/author/crispinakemponamazon

Whispers and Echoes is open to submissions…

October 18, 2025

Whispers and Echoes is an online journal celebrating short writing. It is currently open to submissions of poems of 10 lines or less, or flash fiction in 100 words and under, on any theme.

For the full submission guidelines, including how to send us your work, follow the link to the submit page.

We can’t wait to read your wonderful words!

Where Is Reality | Lynn White

October 17, 2025

In my sweet dreams

I can float and swim like a fish.

Can extract air from the water

and breathe it out in bubbles.

But in my dark dreams,

the nightmarish ones,

this is just a pretence.

The only air is within me

and the bubbles are lost to me

as I am lost then.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award.

https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com

https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

Sunset | Lisa Paul

October 15, 2025

the day is tired

lays down and opens its heart

and all the colors

of each beautiful moment

that transpired today bleed out

Lisa Paul has been writing since she was a girl. She has been published in Aurora Magazine, a Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College magazine of literature and art. She is also a paralegal. Lisa enjoys writing, her family and her home.

Her blog: https://Lisaapaul.home.blog

Reparations | Britta Benson

October 13, 2025

Another broken heart barely mended.

Not a cause for celebration.

This one calls for a cool, sarky snarl.

Another stump.

Another stain.

Another story.

Barely bearable.

Barely true.

But we don’t judge here.

We just live.

Britta Benson is a German circus performer, writer and linguist, thriving in Scotland since the year 2000. She writes a daily blog (‘Britta’s Blog – Letters from Scotland‘), teaches Gaelic, runs a creative writing group, The Procrastinators, and facilitates creative writing workshops both online and in person. She has published a lyrical memoir, ‘Where my grief sits and how it travels’, and an experimental blackout novel, ‘Love in Time’.