Our Writing & Literature division runs a monthly poetry slam that's exactly as low-stakes as it sounds: you submit something you wrote in the last thirty days, anonymously if you want, and a handful of us read them out loud over a Saturday call. No judging panel, no prizes, just a shared doc and whoever wants to read theirs out loud that week. This month's theme was loose on purpose: "in between." Here are three that stuck with me.

passing period

I wrote this one during, well, a passing period, on the back of a worksheet I was supposed to be finishing.

four minutes between rooms
is not enough time to become
a different version of myself
but I try anyway, every day,
rearranging my face in a window's
reflection like it's a desk I'm allowed
to move things around on.

by the door of the next room
I am almost someone new.
by the second row I am
just myself, late, again,
folding the new version back up
small enough to fit in a pocket

group chat, 11:47pm

This one came from a real group chat, lightly disguised. We've all had this exact conversation at this exact hour.

someone says "you up?"
like it's a question
and not an invitation
to a country only
three of us live in

we are all doing the same homework
in four different houses
pretending we are alone
when really we are just
quietly, separately, awake

together, in the particular way
a glowing screen at midnight
makes a whole room
out of one small rectangle of light

half-finished

The shortest one of the night, and somehow the one that got the most response in the chat afterward.

my favorite drafts are the ones
I never finish,
not because they failed
but because some thoughts
are tents, not houses,
built for one night only,
meant to be taken down
by morning,
folded into something
small enough to carry
to the next idea

why we keep doing this

None of us joined Daevaq because we thought we'd end up reading poetry out loud on a Saturday. Most of us joined for research or debate, the more "official" sounding divisions. But this slam has quietly become one of the most attended events we run, because it asks for something different than every other club: not your best polished work, just whatever you actually wrote between classes, half-distracted, this week. Nobody workshops it into something else. We just read it, and let it be exactly as unfinished as it is.

If you write anything, even just in the margins of a worksheet during a passing period, our next slam is open to every member. You can find the sign-up in the Discord, no portfolio required, no experience needed, just whatever's actually true this month.