New Melissa piece!!!!!! " and I want to tell you stop, but it’s not my place to say anything because I know what hurting yourself means and how it feels as I dig my nails into my legs, my arms, in hidden places to shut out the you are never going to be anything from my father"

"The snow is a soft comfort, a cocoon. He feels a surge of heat, a pilot light about to ignite. And whoosh, he burns into life, limbs hot as blood returns. Music strums through him, the tapping foot of the banjo player like his glorious heart."

"Maybe it was all that beauty, open and exposed. The land flat on each side until you stumble upon this secret so massive in scale it seems unreal. But it’s real. It was there before us and it would be there after"

"I pray for her to say it was boring, that it was over fast, that it felt like nothing and shouldn’t it feel like something, like everything? Shouldn’t it? But before Bernice can answer, Gladys rolls back her eyes, slaps the ground with her free hand, and, I swear, all three of us shudder."

here's an excerpt from my chapbook, which you should buy so I can afford childcare while I go into the fields and harvest fresh fruits and vegetables for my children to eat

asterismbooks.com/product/ragn...

thanks for reading!

Congratulations! So cool!

"We’ve said our goodnight moons and goodnight rooms, started the white-noise machine so he’ll drift off in sweet, sanguine sleep while halfway across the world a distant cousin nestled in his mother’s lap startles from slumber as the buzz of drones enters the room..."

the breathlessness in the ending ✨✨✨"...you and Julie running, running, then leaning against the school wall, all those bricks between him and you, gasping for breath, and then Julie saying it wasn’t so bad because at least when you start middle school next year you can say you’re experienced."

"what if you, without glancing behind you to see if anyone was looking, had sashayed right up to him and put your hands into his long, curly, presumably permed, Poison-inspired rocker hair and run your fingers through it until you reached his chest"

thank you for reading 🙏

thank you for reading and for your words 🥹

gah! thank you for reading 🙏

congrats!!!!

thanks for reading!

thanks for reading!

CONGRATS!!! so cool

Inspired to listen to @dare-williams.bsky.social read his poem ETYMOLOGY (bit.ly/ExpoEtymology) in #Transposition, our podcast, born out of COVID & the need to celebrate our 2020 annual issue writers in a bigger way than sheltering in place allowed. Listen here: expositionreview.com/issues/vol-v....