— Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a letter to Arthur Davison Ficke featured in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

She's radiant and beautiful and I see the way you fit together, Norman Rockwell style. But I love the unconventional, the unusual, and I see it in you, the way you could be, if you stopped trying to fit inside picture frames for other people to look at.

-my poem

you kept making yourself the victim

Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Thinking about it makes me feel sick

I told my therapist once, she's an easy person to love, maybe because love comes naturally to you. I've grown to love us in this present moment, the way our orbits so delicately interconnect. I don't miss the way it was, but I like to sit and write you letters sometimes. You were a permanent address in my brain for two years, it's hard to shake the habit.

To be fair, I haven't been trying very hard.

-my poem

I hold eulogies for moments that haven't passed.

-my poem

you kept making yourself the victim

I told my therapist once, she's an easy person to love, maybe because love comes naturally to you. I've grown to love us in this present moment, the way our orbits so delicately interconnect. I don't miss the way it was, but I like to sit and write you letters sometimes. You were a permanent address in my brain for two years, it's hard to shake the habit.

To be fair, I haven't been trying very hard.

-my poem

-my poem

-my poem

-my poem

I wish I could say I was purely angry, or scared, or sad. The truth is that I am grieving, every moment of every day.

I am grieving for every woman who died with her abuser's name on her gravestone. I am grieving for every girl who will never become a woman. I am grieving for every mother who has ever picked up a phone call that no one deserves. I am grieving for every woman who learns to lie with bruises on her cheek. I am grieving for every person who has walked home with keys in between their hands. I am grieving for the little girls buried, their older brothers more important to the family legacy. I am grieving for every baby, every girl, every woman, every person who has been lost.

Not all women survive.

-my poem

You've watched unspeakable violence at my hands. You've washed my blood off in the sink, cleaned my scraped knuckles. But god, you touch me so soft I can hardly feel it. Like something delicate, something breakable. I close my eyes; and I think of home. You're standing at the door.

-my poem

I drove for four days with my crackling radio to keep me company. Walked around sin city as if I was untouchable. I've never needed him, or her, or you. The seasons change, and people grow, but I'll always be an only child.

-my poem

Mothman Apologia, Robert Wood Lynn

I'm know the script by now. You say I need your help, I say, yes, yes, yes.

-my poem