for long enough to consider
that all the wrens in the morning
of a warm sunny day
sound like my childhood best friend
picking apples overhanging the wall
from someone's garden
when we were eight
May 5
May 5, 2026 at 6:32 AM UTC
my mother is in the kitchen
and she is sitting on a stool in the centre
and she is crying
and she is crying and she is asking
the empty room and my ears listening
a door away what she has done
to cause her child to hate itself
enough to turn to this as if
this change comes from some kind of anger
i had hidden away in me
and not from love
she looks at me in my room
as she is standing at the top of the stairs
and the word that i have become
or that has become synonymous with me
is on her mind
it has infected me like a parasite
and taken away her baby
six years later i don’t hide
the garments in the washer
and she does not ask about the name
she hears from the mouth of my partner
and it goes unsaid
and we pretend
i did not beg
at her feet in the kitchen
Apr 29
Apr 29, 2026 at 6:21 AM UTC
and how did it feel
to be inside that car
as it turned upside down
on the night that you died
and did you see headlights
come to you like eyes
of a god who is telling you
it is your time
and know what it meant
and is there a way
that you could perhaps tell me
if dying was fast
like a burning out light
or if it was slow
with your friends sat around you
and two of them dead
and did you remember —
not then, but ever —
my first day of school
and the ICT room —
you were eight, I was nine —
when they dared you to ask
if i'd go out with you
and did you remember
the way i said no
and did you remember
my reconsideration
because then i misread
your put-on dejection —
and did you remember
you said you were joking;
and did you remember
i said i was too
and as i keep seeing
your face in the news
i see you at eight
back when we didn't know
you would only have thirteen
more years in this place
in memories stuck pritt-sticked
far down in my brain
with the echoes of childhood
and grimy grass stains
from running the field out
on my knees and face
and the smell of a classroom
and paper and pens
and the feeling of being
in the good old days
and was dying like being
back inside that school
in the warm yorkshire june
with your friends all around you
and being let out
for the summer
and i haven't known you
since we were just kids
but you're part of my memory;
i'm sorry you're dead
Apr 13
Apr 13, 2026 at 1:43 PM UTC
the Carolinas sweat in the summer,
swamps seep ******* humid heat
and the trees bleed hot sap into
air thick as tomato soup.
Pickens County, 1962 -
Huck Frank buys a slushy machine,
makes a sign, puts it in the window
of his store to bring in business,
the first of its kind in their town,
but not even the newfangled drinks
down at Frank’s are enough to keep people
cool and draw them out from their homes
where they’re starting to put
AC units through their windows.
a pudgy boy is no more than ten,
and he lies in the bathroom and
presses his back to the green and yellow tiling -
they could never afford the carpet craze -
and tries to
selfishly steal at the stone’s cold
and hold it within himself.
his mama finds him there and laughs
and packs ice water and cheese and peaches and
takes him up to Table Rock, his favorite,
walks him round and round and round it
and talks about buying air conditioning,
putting units through their windows.
and he loves his mama, loves her dearly,
but he cannot wait until he’s
old enough to take himself there,
to stare freely at the trees
as long as he likes, to melt
alone in the sun as it hangs
in the sky like a fat ripe orange
and then he'll stop at Frank’s
on the way home
to get his and Mama’s favorite candy -
or maybe with a girl, a boy,
a body with a hand that wants to
hold his like he wants to hold theirs,
maybe with a pretty face like
Sammy Rigby, Leslie Parker,
someone to be sweaty with
in summer months
like how other kids will go out to
the public pools, swim laps and splash,
sit out on porches, in the grass,
lick ice cream running down their wrists
but he is soft,
soft-stomached, soft-voiced, soft-handed,
too soft in the eyes of other children
to attract any sort of kind attention
and he has never had a birthday party
as an August baby.
he loves his mama, loves her dearly,
but wishes that the hand holding his
could belong to someone else
just once
(he regrets this once
his mama’s passed,
wishes he was ten and standing
at Table Rock with her forever,
listening to the price of AC,
but there are
twenty more years to go
or so
before then.)
Feb 28
Feb 28, 2026 at 4:39 PM UTC
i am a fish.
i live in craggled shallows
seafoam smooths over my fins
makes my silver scales glow white
i want to twist and curl out from the shore
and swim the grey rock seas,
surf down the coast to capetown
perhaps scale the road to ferndale
see the fish markets
but i have no feet to walk on
and i cannot breathe on land
and all the people living there would likely
not take kindly to
no feet, no mouth, no hands
i'm unhappy as a fish,
always missing what i
do not have
i understand
that i must have
a fundamental lack
not something natural
like an empty shore waiting
for the tide to push and pull
and fill the gap
Feb 9
Feb 9, 2026 at 5:57 PM UTC
don’t you know there are no wishes on sundays?
we make wishes on stars.
we pick the biggest one in the sky
or the brightest one that night
or, if you’re lucky, one that is falling
and close our eyes and trust
that our dreams will be satellited
to the nearest deity. 1 business day shipping.
(everyone knows there are no wishes on sundays.)
we make wishes on eyelashes.
if you find one on your cheek you are lucky, you are
chosen, you get to send a letter!
you blow it from your finger with your wish and trust
that the mail carrier delivers it
again, to the nearest deity. 3 business day shipping.
(eyelashes are slower than satellites.)
(everyone knows eyelashes are slower than satellites.)
why are eyelashes and stars both lucky?
i swallow them instead. i pinch it between my fingers.
i bite off half, then the other
and there is stardust in my throat
but not on sundays.
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 11:46 AM UTC
passing cars flick glowing retinas
over curled-up bodies deep down in the ditch.
we were not made for fluorescent lighting
and the world at night seems far too bright
than the gentle beams from our childhood cars
dipped low and slow, shining just for us.
we held out our books from the back seat
and we hoped to catch licks of yellow light
like fireflies as it flickered by,
then bedtime under orange streetlights.
they cradled us in their hands like mice.
we were the future, but they wanted it bright.
the bench in the classroom flickers red-pink-clear
and the words on the whiteboard fall into numbers
and squiggle falsely under squinting eyes into
rabbits, badgers, dormice, hares,
a foreign language to the brave new world,
and a strange look on from the weary teachers,
who watch the world as it plays the river
and selfishly erodes its own riverbanks,
but their hands are tied, stuck fast in the net.
they watch as children play in the dirt
a little less for every generation that passes.
we squirm together like fish under fractions.
we are the new deer caught in headlights
and you will find us at the side of the road
hunched and bleeding, dazzled and cold
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 10:39 AM UTC
we have hushed conversations about you
over my lunch and their breakfast,
a quiet sermon over the phone and
stilted sentences in messages.
you collected us like bottle caps,
crusty blue, green, red, lime metal,
and you put us in a drawer and then
forgot of our existence.
we discuss it at great length. over my toast, and their eggs.
you told me once you were afraid of arizona’s heat
from the safety of the big house with the fish
in massachusetts. now you paint next door.
you pulled ribs from my waiting chest
and tucked them deep into your sleeves
and took you and your blood-stained linen
and discarded them in a corner in new mexico
5000 miles away from my softening brain.
“everything is because of this,” i whisper,
and above the orange is the whistling of the wind
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 10:06 AM UTC
"to be trans
is to be your own pallbearer"—
to feel dead fingers that
curl when yours do,
grip when yours grip,
sick and thick with rot
to have a dead [girl/boy] attached
like a tumour, feeding from you,
whimpering
i cover [his/her] ears
so [s/he] does not hear me killing [him/her]
perpetually forever/so [s/he] might move on to Heaven
Feb 6
Feb 6, 2026 at 7:13 AM UTC
in the bath when i was three
popcorn grew on the apricot tree
outside the window. me and him,
babbled hands as daddy sings.
daddy’s girl, daddy’s boy,
daddy’s little something, once;
sweetie, darling, tumour child,
raising you was pulling teeth
and hitting you upside the head
but i’ll read stories in your bed
and tell you of the apricot tree
that grows popcorn just for me.
i saw him slope away from me
inside a mall in leicestershire;
he shows his love through sixty pounds
instead of sending fifty-five
and no more popcorn seems to grow
on the apricot tree outside the window
Feb 5
Feb 5, 2026 at 4:15 PM UTC