Ode To Emptiness By Sally Wen Mao

I’M GOING BACK TO MINNESOTA WHERE SADNESS MAKES SENSE

by Danez Smith

O California, don’t you know the sun is only a god if you learn to starve for him? I’m bored with the ocean I stood at the lip of it, dressed in down, praying for snow I know, I’m strange, too much light makes me nervous at least in this land where the trees always bear green. I know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful. Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California? The sun above you, the snow & stalled sea — a field of mirror all demanding to be the sun too, everything around you is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you & it’s so sad, you know? You’re the only warm thing for miles & the only thing that can’t shine.

I don’t want to be the owner of your fantasy, I just want to be a part of your family

Memory

by Margaret Atwood

Memory is not in the head only. It’s midnight, you existed once, you exist again, my entire skin sensitive as an eye, imprint of you glowing against me, burnt-out match in a dark room.

sneaking onto the reservoir again by Robert Wood Lynn

dating simulator where it starts normal but it slowly becomes clear that all of the romanceable characters are attempting to cover up an extremely specific murder they committed a year ago before you arrived

Lord Henry is the 19th century Andrew Tate.

hey just so you know the harder i swim the faster i sink if you even care

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

love poem beginning with a yellow cab by José Olivarez

witness by Crystal Wilkinson