Your love was a moth’s wing pinned to my chest,
and every beat—
God, it stung.
I’d have swallowed the whole moon for you,
if only to feel something
bigger than the guilt that dripped
from your tongue.
We called it love,
but it was a bloodletting,
your hands always at my throat,
mine always somewhere
I shouldn’t have reached.
Do you remember the park bench,
where you said “forever”
like you meant...
The first time she met him, the cowgirl was standing on a rotted dock by a gas station that sold neon beer signs and stale coffee. She wasn’t supposed to be there, wasn’t supposed to be off her ranch—daddy always said city folks were trouble—but she’d been running low on reasons to stay put. He wasn’t supposed to be there either. Princes don’t hang around places like this. But here he was, broodin...
**December 5th**
There was blood on the syringe again. I didn’t clean it. Not this time. I told myself it was the protocol, but in truth, I wanted to keep the memory of him sharp. I wanted the ghost of his heartbeat to linger in the sterile hum of this room. It was too fast—his heart, I mean. Too alive. And the way it faltered when my gloved fingers pressed against his wrist—I could still feel it...
**You have ninety seconds to hide. If you are found, you die. Good luck.**
The voice slithered through the dark like oil spilling over wet pavement. It didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. It planted itself in every crevice of her skull like a root burrowing for water. Marlie froze, her chest a hollow cathedral for the screaming silence that followed. Ninety seconds.
Her feet moved before her brain d...
**With the night comes darkness, but also stars.**
And isn’t that the trick?
The poison sugar at the rim of the glass.
You kiss me like a blade soft enough to beg for,
and I let you. Every time.
They warned me about you.
That you were the kind of disaster
to light cigarettes in the rain,
to write love letters to your own shadow
and send them unsigned.
But I swore I’d never need saving.
I watch t...
James Burnham was shot and killed yesterday. That’s what the reporter says, bright teeth and dead eyes behind the screen.
James watches the announcement from his kitchen, pouring coffee into a chipped ceramic mug that has _Best Dad Ever_ printed on it, though he’s never been a father. He’s smirking, the kind of smile that curls like smoke, like the idea of being dead is some private joke only he’...
The ballerina doll spins again. She always spins again. She hates the sound—those brittle notes stabbing the air as her porcelain body is dragged into another pirouette by the clockwork monster inside her. She doesn’t sleep, not really, but she dreams sometimes. Of not spinning. Of feeling something other than the sickening tick-tick-tick of the mechanism grinding her hollow bones into perfect, de...
It starts with her saying yes.
There’s a simplicity to it—one syllable, two letters. Yes. The kind of word that slips out before you think. Like a cough, or a confession. She didn’t realize, at the time, that the word had weight. That it would thicken in her throat every night after, settle like a stone in her stomach.
They had asked for volunteers. Just a few. Just the brave ones. And she, desp...
My grandmother always told me
life is a room with no windows—
just you, a flickering lamp,
and the sound of your own breath
turning into static.
She said this while slicing apples,
her knife biting the skin so clean
it made me wonder
if the fruit ever knew pain.
I asked her once, "What happens if I open the door?"
She looked at me like I was a shadow
she’d forgotten to turn off.
"Don’t," she sa...
The satchel isn’t mine. It belonged to my mother’s sister, or maybe my father’s brother—the family tree is a burning tire fire, anyway. What matters is that the satchel sits beside me now, throbbing gently like a dying heart. It smells like mothballs and wet wood. There’s a faint hum coming from its clasp, a sound you can’t unhear once you notice it. It calls to me, louder than grief. Louder than ...
