align

Their sleeping bodies shared a border,

pressed together like neighboring states.

Photo: Lina Scheynius

stay

With a heart as full as winter's long,

don't leave me here,

without you.

Photo: Coquinete

little volcano

You're so hot, he said, taking her temperature with his body.

You melt me from within, he said, from deep inside her molten core.

photo: camilla akrans

first

"I was first."

Everyone stopped talking and stared at her as if she'd done

something unconscionable. The pronouncement hovered, rippling in

the air long after she'd closed her mouth. It was brash, perhaps,

but the words had escaped with unstoppable certainty,

a bold assertion which refused to be challenged.

They all stood in silence, indefinitely fixed

on this public act of self-defense.

It was her first.

photo: tea shafie

ruin, silently

Somehow we were ruined, like that time you bled on my new white sheets. Remember those new white sheets?

Now they're stained with silence, the fading outlines reminders

of everything left unsaid.

I never said this, either. I love your middle name.

Photo: appleapplegreen

transference

Hovering above bare flesh I stole his sadness,

trapped like a newborn's breath in feline lungs.

photo: hophopscotch