I feel like I have a lot of announcements, recently :????

My 4th book is out now! You can buy the print version here - https://a.co/d/7imyFLL

the ebook will be available January 15th.

If you feel like you can commit to leaving me a review on Goodreads or Amazon then let me know, and I will send you a free PDF :)

Much love all! <3

If anyone would like a digital copy of Querencia Press' Summer 2022 Anthology, send me a DM with your email address, and I will send you a copy.

I really loved getting your submissions through the Challenge here on Prose, and I am thinking of doing this for our Spring call out as well. I thought that some of you may appreciate the opportunity to check out what type of work we are typically publishing in our anthologies before submitting again.

Much love <3 Em

Your hands are often too rough. The skin at the edges of your nail beds is peeled back and hardened and has, on occasion, been known to bleed without warning. If I run my thumb along the inside of your palm, I know exactly where it will catch on raised callouses. And even when I’m alone, I can feel the spot where your fingers would rest in the webbing of my own. My skin is electric shocks at the thought of the places where your fingertips most often linger. Nerve endings, attention-wrought. Breath, hitched in tightrope suspension. And I can count your freckles without you in the room. I could draw a map of your skeleton from memory. Place each rib in its exact location. Carve the precise depth of your clavicle. I know the pattern your teeth leave on each of my hips and how your tongue feels restless against my own. My neck can recall each spot where your lips chap and how often your front teeth push past them. I am violently aware of the spots where your hair refuses to lie against your scalp and instead reaches skyward. The sighs and stutters that litter your speech patterns. I can feel the sharp intake of your breath when my teeth close just a bit too hard on your frame. And that slight leak of CO2 in nighttime stillness. I sleep, dizzy in your exhales as they fill up my inhales. I would swear I have been constructed from the realization of the space that you fill in relation to all of the emptiness I leave behind. And you forgot the color of my eyes.

*this piece is from my newest collection baby, sweetheart, honey coming in January and available wherever books are sold.

i am me in the way the lilies unfold again

full and unyielding

pieced and steepled

rebuilt

rebuilding

porcelain drowning

call it devoured

let the birthing breathe

let the birthing bleed

It’s a softer light than what they say

Top heavy mountain listing off toward the compression of grief

I can fight a fury from the ground up

Stitch the rage into stomach lining

Drop my organs into the donation box

I’ll let it pass for a safety net

We all sleep on the ground sometimes

We all live in the open air sometimes

It’s only smart thinking

Call it a last will and testament

Charcoal as a beneficiary

I want to bury the inheritance

I want to cut out my own throat

Drown in the aftermath

my throat is a mass grave and I’m not sorry

i want to eat a knife blade from the corner of your smile

your forearm across my windpipe, sepia fever dream, stained the color of the crook of your elbow

i stopped using straws to drink when I realized I’d keep drowning in empty paper coffee sleeves

the liquid bites my tongue, sends me tumbling through a landslide to 2018, and I reach down my waist band sweating in a too familiar parking lot

i ache against my palm

shift my mouth against a breath that’s not there

gulp down night air

wonder when the sun began to set this quick

Some of you know, but I recently cofounded a small publishing press—Querencia Press

We currently have an open themed call for anthology submissions, as well as always being open for manuscript submissions.

When my last 3 books were published, many of you asked if I could pass work on to my publishers, and I felt bad because that just isn’t how it works. They don’t care to hear about who you know and recommend.

That being said, I am the EIC for a press now, and would love to see work from the people who kickstarted my writing journey end up in print. If you’re interested submissions guidelines can be found here—

www.querenciapress.com/submit

We also accept work that has already been published, so you can even send us work that you’ve already posted here on Prose.

As always, much love, <3

it's a specific ache

sleep is stealing over the sheets

i cradle a lover

i'm dizzy-heavy, all muscle melting into madrugada impending

a bird is tucked under its wing

the bugs have gentled their glow

i'm weighted eyes

i'm floating bones

i'm thanking clouds for holding out another hour

i'm almost there

my chest tightens

my throat constricts

i'm an almost dream

i'm haunted by a crying spell

i'm at the edge

my voice curdles

i hold the scream

i fail to sleep

I had a bad thought today, chewed skin from palm, sinned myself raw

I watched the razor blade too closely, ran my hand across a flame, let the pill sit on tongue, and it’s bitter, but I swallow, and when I look at the ceiling I see a noose, pale skin in the tub, blue veins on the pillows

I had a bad thought today, chewed skin from palm, sinned myself raw

I turned my head into you whispering, let it tickle my ear, remembered I said fuck fuck fuck and then your name, and it’s warm, and it’s wet

I had a bad thought today, chewed skin from palm, sinned myself raw

I saw the way she cut her hair, pulled at a curl, laughed that she’s always a few steps behind me, took the shears to my ends

I had a bad thought today, chewed skin from palm, sinned myself raw

I knelt on tile floors, wept the way I wanted my mouth to, nuzzled the back of my throat, I hold it down, watch the way I fill, think how I’m never full

I had a bad thought today, chewed skin from palm, sinned myself raw, sinned myself raw

What should I have done? I can keep telling you how I’m fighting this choking. How my skin just won’t settle. I can pray to pounding eardrums, but the heat from my hairline will keep pulsing either way. There’s no peaceful resolution for a phantom limb, and mine is always dragging you across time warps. The ghost of a finger slices through the years and folds back the edges. I could sing a hymn to empty spaces, but that only ever leaves us slipping through the vacancy. I can’t contort this to the proper shape. So here we are, me stitching the divide, just the same as always. I fear that the cloth can’t handle another cut. I fear that we’re losing the thread of this. Losing the form, the foundation. I should have drafted a precipice. I should have curled my toes, dug myself into earth, I should have never let go.