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 ...

So I ended up going to that trans pride event, and it was a concert... a metal concert! I love metal. Just wasn't expecting that and really wasn't in the right mindset to be in that environment. Unfortunately, neither my friend showed or the LGBT group I joined who said they'd be there. Honestly, it was a pretty shitty day. Spent 70 bucks to and from to Uber there and got a sticker out of it and a shitty Modelo thrown onto my shirt. Heavy rain also pushed inside art vendors which I told myself I would visit after a few songs... it's fine!

On a brighter note, I've been more interested by brutalism. I kind of thought I would always hate it, given how gray and dull it comes across but I think considering the economic climate I have a new appreciation for it: art made from the bare minimum, what could barely be afforded, and eventually what was familiar even despit...

• 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

Recently I've realized that a lot of my decision making recently has centered being trans and that realization has really frightened me. Naturally, when I was making these decisions, I took notice that being transgender was a contributing factor; the most major of these decisions being my major which was originally education but then was changed to psychology (then dental hygiene... then back to psychology) and while I do enjoy psychology, I worry I'm not suitable for the work. I feel like education is where my heart lies but I worry about my safety and stability given the recent controversy with Mel Curth.

I guess I didn't truly realize the weight of this decision and didn't consider it. I mentioned I eventually decided to go with dental hygiene instead, so I guess that's probably why I didn't think about it too hard? I figured it was also pretty safe (given I'd be masked at work and on t...

so tired of living my life in fear / you listen but you don't hear / i'm yelling and my body is jelly / shaky, frenzied and calcifying / but you just keep on smiling / why are you smiling?

you tell me to talk and i'm afraid i'll bark

what is there to talk about?

i can't cry unless the moon is blue / i work until I'm sore / 'til my muscles have been cut through / and i sleep until my day's halfway over.

what is there to talk about?

you open my mouth and it's just bark, bark, bark.

get me to dance on my hind legs and you're happy / but there's something crawling under my skin, a worm, and i'll bite until i pierce my skin, then it'll be yours.

so much to talk about, yet so little.

bark, bark, bark.

I thought I saw you in the grocery store you used to work at the other day— I almost stopped to say 'Hello, how are you?'

You walked past me without a word, and it was only then that I remembered that you had made your home already in a place that I can't reach, in a grave whose address I was never given.

I only found God when you left us behind. I sat in your tiny, little church and I listened to the pastor, who barely knew your name, give a eulogy that failed to capture your memory. Who else knew you but God? How else could I get closer to a ghost than getting to know the Holy Spirit, which you had followed so assiduously?

When I see him, I'll ask you how you've been, and I hope he tells me you've enjoyed the clementines I last left you.

• replace this text with your list
• begin each item with an asterisk

• ˗ˏˋ kaveh (genshin impact) ˎˊ˗
• link (breath of the wild)
• harrowhark nonagesimus (the locked tomb)
• oikawa tooru (haikyuu!!)

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

Tomorrow, I am going to go to a trans pride event with a friend who I haven't seen in about 8 years (is he really a friend at that point? Regardless, I've been wanting to hang out with him recently.). I felt so elated at him telling me he was also going to this event that I didn't really stop to consider that I don't *really* know him all that well... and now I feel a similar feeling of dread in my chest as when I considered going alone, feeling still like I'm going by myself, but also feeling trapped into going because I already said I would go. He said I could tag along but hasn't mentioned what time he'll be going / organized any rides. My partner, I think, can go as well but I doubt he wants to; he hasn't expressed any interest in doing so. I guess more than anything I'm scared of being alone in the case of anything happening to me.

When I was robbed in December 2024, I fel...

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 ...

• 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

She felt disgusting, hand creeping between her legs, but had she not been already? Her daily uniform in the Lord's castle was her sloppy coal smeared face, charmingly ruined further with her vomit and blood on most days. She dragged her feet when she walked and her index finger twitched every ten seconds. Her hair was longer than it had ever been before, brushing across her shoulders despite her nearly biweekly hair cuts.

She was no saint, despite her newly given title; she was barely a girl.

Ianthe, if only she were unfortunate enough to bear witness to Harrow's misdeeds, would have teased her senselessly for her sacrilegious acts, her unnaturally platinum teeth peeking through her thin, dry lips— the only light in the room.

"Our Emperor Undying is just down the hallway, Crazycakes. Have you no shame?"

God was down several hallways, but the me...

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...