elise’s poem

A head curls into my neck at 3:00 AM. I feel your chest rise slowly while your breath makes my …

Ichor

Apollo hummed your name and I asked how he knew you. He’s an Erotes, dear girl, he says as though …

Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor

Darkened eyes swell by firelight until they’re glazed with smoke. This hollowed heart echoes and it sounds like Bach, filling …

Sour Breath

Holding the moon over crushed ice, I bite my tongue to avoid your vanities and you wrap yours around my …

Achilles Marble

Three years I’ve been carved of marble, cold and desolate to emotion. I’d forgotten what it was to feel before …

souvenir

heirloom heart and quilted skin, i hand myself to you and ask for safe keeping.  

Honeyed

I soaked my skin in honey & sun until I felt as brightened as you see me. Soon saturated, I …

Shadow Projection

I have hidden parts of myself in other people and I hope they find her in these moments, when the …

Erasure

Sitting on a bench at 4:27PM, burnt cheeks and glossy eyes. The thought of you warrants a pained laugh, a …

seven daydreams

i.    i tell you and ramble and you cup my cheek with your right hand and grin. we’re outside. …

Treacherous

Frozen orange skies in February snow coat each memory that I have of you. Cold, bitter, fragmentary, and distant.

Come in Waves, Leave in a Drought

When the permanent ephemerality of the words you whispered rang in my ears, believing you felt like safety. It was …

Liberosis in Redamancy

My heart of excess and hollowed bones of flight float in empty spaces, filling in meaning where there is none. …

Magnetic

Frantic & confessing, he chants of goddesses with sky light bodies & rosey coldness. I ask him not to lie …

Siren Song

Fingers trace questions in open air and we create our own mythology. As a siren song sinks into your skin, …

warm things.

new shoes. “I’m proud of you.” time taken to ask. quiet company. sleeptalk. clean sheets after a shower. showers. warm …

In Bodies Other Than Our Own

Brick sand skin feels like silk against mine, you hum and whisper in rhythmic rhyme. Softened syllables float on stone, …

Polyglot

I dream in languages you don’t speak, whispering confessions in brave safety.   Is this valor or cowardice, a heart …

Implicit

The vibrations ring through your chest and into mine, echoes of come closer and all this time floating in what …

Dreamwalk

In my dreams, you walk me like stairs and consume my thoughts as sit-down meals. Your skin is radiant and …

Sunbitten

Sunbitten voices echo through empty November air, reheating frozen-over skin until walls melt into softened stone.   A fear of …

softening

brutal kindness is unfamiliar, my relearned heart reading welcomes as warnings.   how do you soften self sabotage? how do …

Breezeway

A swallowed coast in your touch, you tangle yourself into me until I can’t breathe; your assumed thoughts suffocating mine.

tracing

satin sleeved & velvet hearted, i speak in silk. i leave you a bread crumb trail hoping you’re hungered and …

Field Notes, Unnamed.

  black coffee and Christmas lights and clean soil after rain.   old ink on someone else’s receipts and pencil …

Half Sleep Talking with the Wind

The coffee is bitter like my pride, so I soften it with tired presence. I pretend to be surprised by …

with the dirt in my nails

I. humming city lights soften sounds of cicadas mimicking and muffling rapid hearts. fingers dance and pull the since-dried grass …

Appalachian wind

the wind bites at my neck and I dare it to consume me. carve into my nape and chew me …

Contrasting Conflation

I am a saltwater soul with blue ridge blood peaking like Pisgah while the Atlantic ocean runs through my veins. …