Two Poems by Ash Ochoa

Ash Ochoa

Ash Ochoa is an artist, writer, and nightshift nurse. She tends to think a little too much in the shower and has way too many hobbies. She called herself 'Anonymously Hal' for seven years until coming out of the metaphorical writer's closet in early 2025.

Detached

She couldn't understand why

she never felt the pain...

It had to have hurt.

It was the cortisol,

the norepinephrine...

It was the chemicals produced from

sheer panic that had instantaneously

turned her blood into red rivers

of viscous lidocaine.

Her senses so forcibly amplified

that everything else had just

gone numb.

0918

She regretted her silence.

She regretted not putting up a fight.

She regretted blankly staring

into the off-white frame holding

one of the happiest moments of her life…

While he was giving her one of her worst.