FEELINGS II - THE TIDES
26 WRITERS/ORBITERS - ON A MOVEMENT OF FEELINGS
+23
DEAR ORBITER,Issue XV continues — welcome to The Tides.If The Waves were the rise, This is the return.
The deeper pull.
The quiet after the burst.
The feeling that comes back when you thought it was gone.Here in Part II, The emotions settle differentlySlower, heavier, truer.
Another set of voices.
Another round of chest-deep honesty.
Another movement of FEELINGS.If you’re drifting in from Part I, you’re in the right place.
Let the tides take you the rest of the way.Planet Ral is a next-gen build in the architecture of culture - in 2025, it emerges as the first constellation of its kind: a literary magazine and editorial vertical, a community where art, story, and intellect collide.Upgrading to paid grants you full access to Planet Ral’s creative orbit: exclusive editorial issues, magazines, literary community forums, special guest features, upcoming zines, and the verticals yet to come.P.S. All Artwork and paintings in this issue were transformed into mixed-media pieces, specially designed by the editor.
Pamela Lynch
Deeper. Purer
The aches of life open to joy.
Richer. Deeper. Purer.
The depth of one’s sorrow
Heightens love in the morrow.AN ORIGINAL © PAMELA LYNCH @ 2025
Raquel
Nostalgia
A gritty word
small, textured, and unrelenting
I try to focus on the present, but it just keeps circumventing.
It finds places to hide within me
Tucked away so that I don’t always see
Like grains of sand after a day at the beach
It shows up where I don’t expect it to be.AN ORIGINAL © RAQUEL @ 2025
Vision2Verse
War Drums
After the quiet...
we feel the weight return in whispers,
truth tiptoeing through ribs once clenched,
a pulse relearning its rhythm
without the war drums.AN ORIGINAL © VISION2VERSE @ 2025
Odel Asseille
Frustration
You, frustration — oldest flame,
Long we’ve walked through loss and shame.
Don’t you feel my spirit tire?
Freed from your grasp, my wings aspire.AN ORIGINAL © ODEL ASSEILLE @ 2025
Saima Durrani
From Soft To Loud
From Soft to Loud
My feelings were soft, fragile as snow,
quiet and waiting until I became a mother.
God gifted me twin boys,
and my heart burst with love and wonder.
Now I speak of life’s beauty,
with mothers shaping tomorrow’s men.AN ORIGINAL © SAIMA DURRANI @ 2025HIGHLIGHTS — ZINE O1 — FIRELIGHT
“From our first zine — FIRELIGHT — All the Hope we carry in the Dark”
Planet Ral © 2025Upgrading to paid grants you full access to Planet Ral’s creative orbit: exclusive editorial issues, magazines, literary community forums, special guest features, upcoming zines, and the verticals yet to come. Orbit with us🌍
Nisa Opalla
We Should Go!
Staring at the empty ceiling,
I don’t know if it really matters.
Maybe it’s just fleeting,
this feeling in the middle of transit,
unsure if the destination
is anywhere but here.
So let me stay still,
linger in this nothingness,
because I’m not yet sure
if we should go,
or simply remain.AN ORIGINAL © NISA OPALLA @ 2025
Gary Coulton
Alexithymia
Neutral home
Outbursts never
Emotions felt
Internal clutter
Feelings buried
No release
Body rebellion
Demons unleashed
Capitulation
Life at an end
Alexithymia
Never my friendAN ORIGINAL © GARY COULTON @ 2025
Sacred Rebelle
Too Much Is My Magic
I am the feeling—lightning through roots, moonlight through saltwater—
called too sensitive, but this sensitivity is my compass.
I hear truth in tremors, see meaning in patterns,
a river refusing to shrink to a stream.
My magic lives in the overflow,
where caring cracks me open
and chaos becomes color,
a symphony only love could write.AN ORIGINAL © SACRED REBELLE @ 2025
Nimita Kaul
The Unknown Is Scary
Adrift within the known, terrifying…
What has been revealed so far
Grim, usual, solid, falling apart
Steadies and crumbles in equal parts.
Structure is a luxury one can’t afford now
Either blaze through the shambles or stay put
Figuring out the shards.
I collect these meticulously,
Thoughts, feelings, moments of time...
None feeling mine, floating across
Passing through, while I grasp the meaning of this life.AN ORIGINAL © NIMITA KAUL @ 2025
Stephanie Dee Smith
The Ache That Builds
I’ve learned the ache is not the breaking;
it’s the stretching, the quiet making of space.
Each sorrow has sanded me softer,
each joy has carved its echo deeper.
Every heartbreak, every blaze of fear
was just my heart growing to fit more light.AN ORIGINAL © STEPHANIE DEE SMITH @ 2025HIGHLIGHTS — ZINE O1 — FIRELIGHT
“From our first zine — FIRELIGHT — All the Hope we carry in the Dark”
Planet Ral © 2025Upgrading to paid grants you full access to Planet Ral’s creative orbit: exclusive editorial issues, magazines, literary community forums, special guest features, upcoming zines, and the verticals yet to come. Orbit with us🌍
Dorie Snow/雪多丽
Confused
Lost in the static of my own thoughts,
the ether of my ethos, tearing me to pieces.
I was solid, I was sure. The surety of my sanity, a thread
stretched until it snapped.
Now, I don’t understand. I can cry. I can scream.
Nothing clarifies. My world just crumbles again.
A ghost of a hand rests on my shoulder.
A room, quiet and dark, where the music has ended.
I still feel the impression of your hand on my thigh.
I smell the ghost of your scent lingering in the air.
How did this break? What was the catalyst?
My mind surrounded by doubt.
I replay the words, but they’ve shed their meaning,
leaving only hollow sounds. I am so lost in the how,
in the creation of the ending, I can no longer find the whyAN ORIGINAL © DORIE SNOW @ 2025
Regina Duke
Before The Cages
They taught me to sip my truth,
not to drink it whole—
to whisper so the walls wouldn’t wake,
to stay soft where I was meant to burn.
But silence is a slow kind of burial.
It feasts on the wild inside a woman
until even her pulse forgets its power.
The wild waited—
quiet as marrow,
burning as prayer—
until I remembered:
courage isn’t the roar.
It’s the breath before the fire catches—
the moment the caged bird
remembers her wings.AN ORIGINAL © REGINA DUKE @ 2025
Sue Banerji
Strength For Yet Another Day
Clouds split, stars peek, thoughts sprout
a bird resuscitates breath of a seed
trees sing rebuked release of dreams
waves on the other side of horizons
come back to tickle my feet
reminding me of the grace in yet another day.AN ORIGINAL © SUE BANERJI @ 2025
Madonna
A Lane of My Own
My heart ached, heavy with pain.
I set my eyes on others flowing like rivers,
While I stood still, an oak tree unmoved.
I wondered how, I wondered why,
This feeling almost drove me insane.
Then I saw, my roots ran deep in the soil,
And by cutting them, I’d flow as I should.
A realization that gave me a lane.AN ORIGINAL © MADONNA @ 2025
Laurie Maves ART
With Patience
Breathing here with patience,
the heart unwinds,
The ego dissolves in painted lines;
Mark making in stillness,
the soul takes flight,
Transforming past burdens into gentle lightAN ORIGINAL © LAURIE MAVES ART @ 2025HIGHLIGHTS — ZINE O1 — FIRELIGHT
“From our first zine — FIRELIGHT — All the Hope we carry in the Dark”
Planet Ral © 2025Upgrading to paid grants you full access to Planet Ral’s creative orbit: exclusive editorial issues, magazines, literary community forums, special guest features, upcoming zines, and the verticals yet to come. Orbit with us🌍
Ciara Totton
Arrested Development
Let’s bear north where spring, unborn
has retracted its flamboyant grip.
We prefer the full immersion,
silence and the frozen dirt;
the untimely defrost, waiting, but not
impatient, no longer hiding
from itself. Nothing grows here.
So let’s scatter seeds in the naked
sky, elope with the moon
barreling across the night. AN ORIGINAL © CIARA TOTTON @ 2025
Only Always by Sutton
The Weight of Ink
Blood under torn nails.
Fingertips stained black from the carnage of written word.
Lines that swarm and swim, the pounding of a tiny ocean wilts what was.
Red trails the love, only for trying.
A chest that caves, a soul that fractures and kneels with the plea to belong.
The altar once worshipped lies in ruins, along with its broken warm embrace.
Shards of glass frame reality, pages only held half-truths of the world.
The heart pleads, the mind already knows.
Blood does not mean belonging.AN ORIGINAL © ONLY ALWAYS BY SUTTON @ 2025
Anna | Tender & True
Still Becoming
For the in-between seasons
Some days I bloom.
Some days I break.
But I never stop becoming
who I’m meant to be —
softened, not smaller.AN ORIGINAL © ANNA | TENDER & TRUE @ 2025
Kristina Ray
Anticipation
I can’t wait.
Am I excited or nervous?
It’s difficult to tell.
I can feel it in my bones.
Something amazing is coming.AN ORIGINAL © KRISTINA RAY @ 2025
Susan Elizabeth
Satisfaction
I joyfully live my life when I notice satisfaction,
It opens freely to me
And lets me be where I am now.AN ORIGINAL © SUSAN ELIZABETH @ 2025HIGHLIGHTS — ZINE O1 — FIRELIGHT
“From our first zine — FIRELIGHT — All the Hope we carry in the Dark”
Planet Ral © 2025Upgrading to paid grants you full access to Planet Ral’s creative orbit: exclusive editorial issues, magazines, literary community forums, special guest features, upcoming zines, and the verticals yet to come. Orbit with us🌍
Violet Kay
Amnesty
I do forgive
if only for the slack it lends my heart
an uncoiling of the binding rope
to let me catch
a deeper breath.
in the wary morning light
you could almost think
the storm has passed
the river calmed
but the mud on the banks is fresh
and I have not forgottenAN ORIGINAL © VIOLET KAY @ 2025
Lexy
The Stew Still Hot
The past swirls and pops, like an unwatched pot
Its acrid fetter consumes, breathe you cannot
Through the blinding smoke, the stew still hot
Open the windows and start anew, to make a new potAN ORIGINAL © LEXY @ 2025
Caitlin Gemmell
On Mars Day
on days like today, I think
I’m more deer than woman
for I become marble and hide
at the sounds of too much.
I refrain from drawing attention,
preferring to camouflage and fade.
though my beauty is ethereal
(and therefore sought after)
my gift for ghosting keeps me safe,
allows me to slip through the forest
of their memories. a deer disappears
the moment she is seen.AN ORIGINAL © CAITLIN GEMMELL @ 2025
Rosetta McKinnon
My Sheetz
My sheetz Eye have laid upon
My sheetz Eye have sexed upon
My sheetz Eye have cried upon
My sheetz blood has poured upon
My sheetz semen has spilled upon
My sheetz Eye have died upon
My sheetz Eye pray upon
My sheetz Eye laugh upon
My sheetz Eye came back to myself upon
My sheetz has seen, felt, done everything and
Yet only Eye know what it is that has gone
On and in my sheetz! LOL!
My Sheetz...AN ORIGINAL © ROSETTA MCKINNON @ 2025
Where Wholeness Speaks
My Own Light
I return to the sacred garden within me,
where peace grows wild and unbroken
beneath the soil of every choice I have ever made.
I walk slowly along paths I once abandoned,
touching the tender shoots of infinite possibilities
rising through the earth, amazed that they
continued to grow even in my absence.
I listen as the wind moves through ancient branches,
reminding me of the purpose I carried long before I forgot my way.
With each breath, I reclaim the softness
that never left me and the strength that waited
patiently for my yes. Here, in the quiet bloom of my own becoming,
I gather myself with reverence, honoring the truth
that I am both the keeper and the creator,
quietly continuing to grow from the center of my own light.AN ORIGINAL © WHERE WHOLENESS SPEAKS @ 2025
Lee Byrd Mystic
She'll Never!
This uppity woman isn’t arrogant — she’s awake.
She carries her light openly and refuses to dim.
She stands proud, shoulder to shoulder with every woman who carved a path before her.
She knows humility is holy, her work is sacred, and invisibility is a lie she’ll never wear again.AN ORIGINAL © LEE BYRD MYSTIC @ 2025PART I — “THE WAVES”
PLANET RAL — FEELINGS PLAYLIST 🎵
A soundtrack for The Waves & The Tides. For your feelings.
Issue XV in audio form — 19 Songs.
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It’s wonderful! The issue looks great! Thank you so much for including me. I’m so grateful to meet all of you lovely writers.
THE TIDES is alive.
Thank you for meeting this issue with so much love. This part especially took deep work — editing, designing, weaving mixed-media visuals, and holding over 50 voices with care.
It took grace, endurance, and a whole lot of heart. I’m grateful for everyone who trusted their feelings with us. Thank you for being here, always.