
MOTHER
Mother, your love baked a shell around me until I was ready to crack it and rise from the Earth

Phoenix Song
Things are going to be okay; feathers are falling away, but that only means that they’re clearing out places and space for the new ones.

Dependency Dance
I’d like to slip you underneath my skin, to hold you in the place I need you most— and keep my burning bones from caving in.

The Clairvoyant Picture Show
Slivers of Time in a glass full of Empty— sharp, jagged remnants of earlier daze. Wishing in earnest for noble Nepenthe to douse all the visions and set them ablaze. ((The rulebook has changed. We’re letting it fray.))

End Zone
[Trigger warning for suicide and suicidal ideation, attempted murder, gendered slurs, mention of drowning, and child abuse.] I dreamed I made a goal. When I wake up they tell me it wasn’t a dream. And it wasn’t a goal, either. It was a touchdown—that’s why you’re in the hospital.

Learning Curve
Illustration by Jaye Elizabeth Johnson. You are ashamed of all the years it took to realize that the dark little marks made from your knees slamming into gravel– and your raw palms that never seemed to heal– and the blood running down from lips split, peeling, and pressed tight & slim to let out thin,...

Horror Can Be A Home
“It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.” -Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone Fear is a universal emotion, and thanks to that, it is easy to call on...

Split
There’s another person in me whose silhouette was formed from all the times I’ve tried to thrust the thunder from my veins; Another body made of static and flame, lightly running the pads of its fingers along the knots of my brain and tapping on the tendons tasked with keeping my vibrating bones from...