She hisses at the feeling of ragged metal ends jutting into the skin of her back, threatening to break its surface. Sienna holds her to the wall, her fists clutching the fabric of her suit so tightly that distantly, Willa is worried it'll tear. Instinctively, embarrassingly, Willa's hand finds its way to Sienna's hip and pushes in an effort to restore the comfortable distance they once had between them, but her fingers freeze as they find a sensation that doesn't quite match skin. No, the 'skin' underneath her clothes is much too cold, too smooth. She cringes first at the feeling and then at the realization. When she looks up, Sienna is looking at her with vacant eyes, mouth tight with the slightest hint of indignation.

Willa's strength comes to her briefly, just for long enough that she is able to push the woman away, though the effort alone makes her head spin with nausea. "What ...

• sugar / brockhampton
• halah / mazzy star
• losing my religion / korantema cover
• dear diane / diners
• when the sun hits / slowdive
• famous prophets (stars) / car seat headrest
• love factory / metronomy
• luna / smashing pumpkins
• anenome / the brian jonestown massacre
• drunk ii / mannequin pussy

• ˗ˏˋ kaveh (genshin impact) ˎˊ˗
• harrowhark nonagesimus (the locked tomb)

• luigi's mansion 2
• tomodachi life
• super mario galaxy 1&2
• daryl and chopper funko pop
• courage the cowardly dog box set

I think of you when January comes around, even though it's the month of my birthday and not yours, because that was the last time that I ever wanted you, and yet for being the last time, it was so violent: so violent that I begged you to stay like a dagger was being held to my heart, then cursed you for leaving like you had dug my grave with your own hands, then heaved when you turned your back to me and heaved for so long that I gave your memory my innards.

I thought you would at least come back to say happy birthday.

I still dream of you, at the end of my really good days; a painful reminder that, maybe, you could make my really good days even better. But I know better than to entertain that thought for more than a few seconds. You were my first glimpse of heaven and my last fill of hell.

I am 23 and still drawing horses, trying to perfect the angles of their bent legs as they run wildly— wildly yet deliberately.

When I drive my mom home from the city and past a ranch, she asks me when I'm going back to school, what will my major be. I'm going seventy miles per hour and speeding through lights, imagining myself running instead like in my drawings, fast and frightened but free, the sound of my feet hitting the ground.

The next light turns red and I hit the breaks, feeling her skinny, bone-y fingers dig into the muscle of my bicep like needles. I tell her, "Soon," but the word alone gives me a cancer that gnaws on the muscles of where she holds me.

I am 23 and when I dream, I read books with no commas or periods, no ends to their stories. Words turn into strokes, pages into frames and the frames into mares. I ...

• outdoor chairs
• bean bags
• kitchen chairs
• projector or tv
• plates / bowls / silverware
• food containers
• beaded curtain for kitchen
• welcome mat
• ceramic key tray
• kitchen rug
• metal net wire for balcony
• outdoor couch?
• media table
• black tall dresser to keep in closet

• bad and boujee / migos
• legacy / black dresses
• relax/divide / hail the sun
• who knows / daniel caesar
• like a stone / audioslave
• black lazarus / backxwash
• eventually / tame impala
• younger and dumber / indigo de souza
• black mammoth / fit for an autopsy
• boyish / japanese breakfast

i have no sense of object permanence

at heart i am two months old / there are days where i feel God / thrumming my tiny heart / pushing blood in and out / and in my cheeks / making them a brilliant shade of pink / in my palms as i clutch my grandmother's crocheted blanket / made especially for my mother / for myself.

and then there are days where / the sky is unforgivably, gloriously gray / and yet the rain refuses to fall / refuses to provide the grass the relief it so desperately needs / where time is so sluggish i age a year in just an hour / and my mother locks herself in the kitchen / eyes trained on overdue bills / and lab results which confuse more than help / and my grandfather cannot comprehend / my tiny fists clutching at his pant leg / his eyes dazed, then frightened / at the sight of me, unknown to him / despite him holding me when i first came home.

i. in the dead of night / i want to live with you

ii. move to the city with me.

iii. ???

iv. to think that we could stay the same...

v. anytime, anyplace, anyhow / you're allowed to treat me like a piece of meat / i don't care if it's been a year or sixteen

vi. apologies to future mes and yous

vii. i'll always be yours

Hell is in me because I was born in January, after the birth of Christ and before the day of love, in the awkward shadow of the new year where optimism finally stops dripping from the broken faucet and is followed instead by an emptiness that was only known to God before he spread out his hand to create the world. The Devil held me in my first moments and pressed his thumb into my wet, blood chest and planted a flame that would keep me warm throughout the winter.

Hell is in me because the fire never went out. It grew quietly, and then wildly, and then quietly again until it made a small home out of burned tissue and gasoline in the cavity protected by my ribs. It was so constant, there was nothing to do but feed it and hide away.

Hell is in me the way that I know that Heaven is in you, because you were born in March when spring is just a babe being wo...