The sting of pom-poms strung across the underside of my roommate’s loft-bed trembled ever so slightly as I blinked at them, having just rolled over. Was it the wind through the window? Or was it his subtle intake and exhale of breath that caused them to almost vibrate, suspended in the air. Probably his breathing, I thought. The leaves outside the windowpane were still. I was the only one awake. 8:47. That was nearly irritating to see, since I originally woke up about 47 minutes ago at 8 o’clock, but some deep ache for sleep had kept me planted under my covers and lured my eyes closed again. I still felt it. There was something especially seductive to the prospect of sleeping in this morning. Perhaps it was the cold, for I remember I’d hunched my duvet up over my face, just below my eyes, when I woke up the first time. Our apartment has no insulation, so by the time the clock strikes 4 in the morning I’m just about the only one left in the room who isn’t shivering with the shock of it. But I guess it was especially cold today. I rubbed my feet together, savoring the warmth under my sheets, and then finally hoisted myself onto my elbow in a half attempt to break out of bed. No bloodstains on my pillow, I noticed. That’s good. I’d scrubbed my scalp clean the night before, washing it more times than I think I ever have. I’d shaken my head back and forth like whiplash afterwards to dry my hair, snapping the curls straight and leaving me free of tangles for the first time in a while. Maybe that was it. The blood. Something seemed to be anchoring me down to my mattress; perhaps there was some spiritual quality to covering my entire body in the juice of another animal that left it reset somehow—or maybe tainted—heavy under the weight of it. I could still almost smell it everywhere, irony and foul. Like a phantom scent.
3 hours later I sat at the kitchen table, tired again with a full belly like a satiated kitten. I had somberly lifted myself onto my green rug beside my bed to walk to the gym once I’d accepted that this was the kind of tiredness that can’t be slept off. I’d noticed that there was an especially large number of beautiful men around the neighborhood today, in the gym too. Maybe they all come out at 9:30 on Mondays. I usually go to the gym at 7. They didn’t really look at me though. I guess they were straight, or maybe I was just unattractive since I stopped believing in straight men a long time ago.
My breakfast consisted of 2 eggs, 2 sausages and 2 pieces of toast with at least 3 tablespoons of cream cheese on each. I cooked the eggs after the sausages in my cast iron pan, so that they could soak up the fat of the meat. I also ate a bowl of cereal and drank a glass of milk and a cup of tea. I’m was still hungry though. I’m the only one in this apartment who really eats.
Another 9 1/2 hours later I had my arms locked around a boy a little taller than me, with hair a little shorter, my tongue in his mouth and my back against a brick wall. But somewhere between biting his bottom lip and licking his neck, a bitterness crept onto my palate and it stayed there. I suctioned my lips around the skin below his ear and bit it, not gently, but not hard. What is that taste? Is it his neck? I don’t think so. His hands were gentle on my back as he kissed at my collarbone. I rocked my head back and looked up at the sky. We stood at the dead end of a service alley beside the building, surrounded by tall, brick walls on three sides, maybe 20 feet high. The only way out was a steep path of pavement, but the trees waved down from the square hole above us where I could see the clouds marching through the air. The light pollution made it so that they still moved across a backdrop of subtle blue, although it was sometime around 9:30. The clouds moved quickly. There must be wind. I kissed him back hard, I kissed him back gently, but mostly it just felt like lips moving on lips. I wonder if it would feel different if he was someone I craved. And there it was again, I made a realization. I was thinking about the two of them. Again. I guess I’m still doing things for them. Is all of this just so I can prove to them I don’t need their affection? I guessed that even now, it was still important to me. I mean, it must have been if it was capable of taking my mind off the situation at hand. I wonder how it would feel to kiss… him… Would he kiss back like this? I wonder if he’s a good kisser too. I felt embarrassed at the thought, and frustrated at its tone deafness, so I hushed it away, but it was not the last time my mind mentioned it all to me before I went home to bed. The second realization I made was that I was waiting for the boy in my arms to inch down my midriff to the equator of my pant button. The back and forth was already redundant. I could tell there was a question he was waiting to ask me, and he hadn’t yet proven himself to be the shy type. He soon lifted the bottom of my sweater, kissing my stomach till it trembled with the tickle of it, and I stood stricken, but before I could say anything he returned to my face.
My heart was beating so fast I think I nearly fainted. I wasn’t waiting for the moment itself, but for the moment to finally provide an ample possibility for me to mention what I hadn’t yet; if he unbuttoned my pants in search of a hard member underneath, he wouldn’t find it. Having to surprise people with something is so scary. Even though I knew he wouldn’t care, there’s always the potential that you’ll watch as something in their eyes change as they look you down and then up again. For a moment you become a spectacle, something to regard, a kind of show object. In the next moment you become something they don’t want anymore.
I brushed my teeth well when I got home, just to make sure the bitterness would stay gone. One of the bulbs in the sconce had gone out. I’ve thought about the two of them so many times tonight I might as well have just done it it all for them. I guess I kind of did, didn’t I. My stubble was nearing the length of a short beard. I should shave. I kind of liked it though. It was a new adornment, like some kind of jewelry. My mouth foamed white as I continued to scrub my tongue, and my eyes lingered on the wall. There to the right of the dead half of the sconce were about 4 small, round, rust-colored stains. I guess I didn’t get all the blood out.
E. Falter 5/30/25
I just want to shop in the grocery store one more time
Looking for yeast, with you
Somewhere in the breath of the silence where someone wants to say “I love you” and doesn’t
That’s where I am, waiting on a sign, wishing on a star
But most people who do that spend their sorry lives hoping
I really shouldn’t shouldn’t I?
I wish, I say to the star, “I wish you’d want me in your pocket”
What happened to the girl who wanted me in her pocket?
Do you think of me, do you imagine me on the street, just out of reach?
I do
I’m always confessing things aren’t I
I couldn’t begin to pick up the pieces
So on my bedside, I lit a candle, this candle you gave me
I just need an answer
Will she die here? In me?
Is there something left to wait for?
Something to look to, something to watch over me and keep the darkness away
I watched it until I fell asleep
Hoping to know the answer by morning
E. Falter 7/2/25
And now you look upon my body and you search for a shink that may open me wide and let you in to what you know. You won’t find it though. Do you think this is the first time? But you’re a fool if you think you have a weapon sharp enough to saw down the truth as it stands. And you’re a fool if you think I am different to you. Should you try to pry open my bones and my buttons you would not hurt me anymore, not now. You will only reveal yourself to be what I already knew you were. Because if you’re gonna be a faggot at least follow through. I’ve danced this dance before, I know exactly why you don't look at me now. The flirtatious linger in your gaze, suddenly absent, your eyes are dead. Your stare is dead. Static, devoid of sensation now. You are afraid to look. Do not try to justify it to yourself either, as if you are no fool for not wanting me now. I have not gone anywhere, I have not suddenly changed. I am not your dog, I do not beg. I will not poke my nose out from under the table and look up at you with big, wet eyes as I stuff my snout into your crotch. I will however, tear what little you have into something bloody if you give me the chance, which you now have. I do not beg for the permission to reside someplace that’s mine, as it is yours. You think it is yours. Don’t turn your back to a dog like me. And all this performance of yours does not change one crucial fact: I know you thought about it. I know you wondered to yourself what it looks like when my clothes are all off. Would it even feel different? I cannot take that thought out from the minutes, nor can you. I suppose it’s hard to wonder those things if you’re looking into my eyes.
anonymous 5/30/25
I was 21 when I learned how to hold the fear in my abdomen,
small and cold like a river-stone in my diaphragm.
I learned to feel it there between each breath, and still be able to use my hands
To load boxes and pass out flashlights, and hold an umbrella between myself and police
officers in riot gear with handlebar mustaches.
It is a privilege that I didn’t have to learn sooner.
I was 22 when I learned how to shoot a gun. I thought I would cry
But I did not.
However my hands shook uncontrollably as I pressed each brass bullet into the magazine
And as I raised the weapon to shoot
At the gray, paper silhouette on newsprint before me,
Of which I had chosen the vaguest human form possible.
The only thing that has been honest enough to tell myself
Has been to remind myself that I am still breathing.
“I am still breathing.”
It’s not true to say that I’m safe, or to say that it’s ok.
I was 20 when a small lesbian drew a star on my chest
Just over my heart
With an inked needle that did not draw blood.
I lay on a padded table next to the kitchen, and I didn’t feel very much of the pain.
That was because some of my nerves still hadn’t grown back in under my skin,
Like mycelium.
I’ve been captivated by two things on my short walk home between the bus stop and my door:
There is a sycamore tree that has lost most of its leaves
And its vacant branches reach into the sky like black, interlocking fishbones
Or skeletal hands,
Once the gray twilight reaches their fingers.
On the ground, a few meters before it, is a bush of white flowers.
Every time I pass it, I think Oh how they must glow at night
So pale and bright under the light of the moon.
Maybe to live is to sing a love song into a strong wind
And lose your words to it forever.
E. Falter 5/28/25
Sewed with 900,000 hairs
Interlocking like cracked earth
Synthetic knit with the real
Cells coalescing, unnatural
And the steam through it
Propelled by The Wanting
To expel in a hot burst,
The kind that blinds like
When you step over the
Grate in the sidewalk, white,
Almost animal breath
Sucking in the air through
Slatted teeth and the
Molecules there will marinate
Permeate in the warmth and
Wetness cultivated to receive them
Their essence absorbed through
The throat of its inner workings
It is always hungry
Its bones ache and groan not
With noise, but with a quivering
The boiling well from which its
Energy is derived
A steady hum, a vibration,
A perfect function
Follow through
Flawless in execution,
It does not tire
Its program, deeply engineered
Into biomechanics, organic flux
And fascia
E. Falter 5/15/25
I felt consequently overthrown due to my tiresome labor
with my stomach caving in from starvation
I slept in my lover's arms afterwards
and woke up from a dream where I was only existing
a quiet comforting stillness
where I can only hear my heart beating softly
I raised myself out of the bed and got a closer look of our baby blue sky
my mind wandered to my unreachable desires
I tried to depict these oddly shaped cloud from the sky
I remedied my eyes, my heart and my mind
so I can visualize and form the silhouette of my destined infant
in a fetal position inside of my womb
waiting patiently to be apart of my life
M. Aragon 5/7/25
Like Splitting Egg Whites
In my moment of confession before I fell unconscious
I see it, lit warmly in my mind
Your finger, your single index finger, I touch it
Holding it as gently as a baby bird, I kiss the fingernail
Am I pretending?
“Two things can be true”
I’m cracking the egg
I’m passing the yolk gingerly from one half-shell to the other
Splitting the egg whites
E. Falter 3/29/25
Night Animal
Tell me softly night animal, where do you run to hide?
What worlds do you build beneath your feet as you search the dark so wide
Looking for a place to sleep, a place to rest your head
Night animal, tell me, where do you hold your heart once it has bled?
Night animal, I know the things your dancing eyes have seen
I run beside you in the dark, I live my life between
Day and night and sweet twilight is when I feel my lungs sing gold
Night animal, if we flee fast enough, perhaps we will not feel the cold
For wings of frost and fur and wild, ferns that reach the stars so high
And summer breezes carry scents of sweat that tell you how you’re meant to die
And whisper to you in your ear that your breath is just like mine
And together we may live in fear, but night animal, how your hair still shines
And shows me worlds inside my head and places I can run to
And visions raise me from my bed and chase me where I come to
I never want to dream again, I never want to sleep
Night animal take me to your world, night animal, I am yours to keep
E. Falter 3/15/25