But how to explain to you the phantoms that motivate a hunger like mine? Once I had a hankering for honey so strong I ate nothing without it for a week. Our honey jar was old, the golden insides turned cold—in some places, crystalized. You told me to just buy another jar, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the effort, the bees, all those trips back and forth to the hive. To not attempt to use it up seemed, to me, a cruelty. The night before you finally admitted there was someone else, I was contentedly working my way through the same old jar. It was late and I was tired and there were no clean knives left to scoop out the dregs, so I used a fork. When you caught me in the dim of the kitchen, I had already excavated down to the bottommost layer, where there was a surprise pocket of soft remains, a place where the crystals hadn’t yet hardened. I was only trying to salvage the last of that smoothness. Still it kept slipping through the tines.

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Header photograph by Jen Ippensen
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

my body, your body, our bodies, bodies, fading in and out and in and out until suddenly we are both nothing, nothing but whispers that echo like leaves beneath our feet, nothing but whispers like the creaking of a tree on a hill, nothing but whispers like i love you to people we will never hold again 

i am in and out and in and out of love with you, with me, with your body as we tumble into bed, with my hair as i will it to grow every day, with the growing comfort of us, i love you like i love the sun after an especially cold winter, the way the sun can take away all the darkness that festers inside me, i wonder if we would fall in love again if given a chance, i wonder if we were meant to be or if we were a mistake i learned to love, i have made so many mistakes and i have never learned how to love any of them and still i wonder if you love me the same way i loved the girl i used to be

i don’t think this is a love poem, i am so scared, scared that if your eyes ever set upon this, scared that if you ever heard these words, these whispers, the faint murmuring of my voice, you would think that i don’t love you, that i don’t love you with my whole heart, when the truth is my body is made of love for you, but this isn’t a love poem, it’s an outpouring, a river from my fingertips, from my mouth, a form of love that i just don’t know how to give

time let us grow up, grow close, shed our skin for new bodies, sometimes i wonder how you can love me after everything i’ve done, after everyone i’ve been, how many people have you loved by loving me, will you continue to love me if i continue to fade, will you love me if i fade in and out and in and out, i am not a ghost but i am scared that someday i might disappear, fade away until i am only a memory of someone you could have loved

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Header photograph by Jen Ippensen
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Come here.
Among the elbows 
of deciduous trees 
and lighthouse beacons 
of fireflies. 
I want you 
close enough to feel
the tightrope tension 
when I say nothing 
with a full mouth. 
My throat 
dissolves each I love you
that promises to earthquake my roots 
before it hits the pink
of my tongue. 

So stay there. 
Between mountains 
and the possibility 
we might not survive you. 
It’s too expensive to bury 
the codependency 
and broken vows 
hidden in the basement. 
Consider the black and blue
of falling for someone 
who can love you 
out loud.

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Header photograph by Jen Ippensen
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

But I’m still crying, still a mess, still remembering that I’m the reason she died in a wheelchair. How, when I was still small enough to be carried, she slipped and broke her hip while holding me. Everyone is whispering amen and I am all blasphemy, a faith tied only to soil. The preacher speaks about ascension, but I’m grounded, can’t stop staring at her hands. How they look like they could reach out. How they must have held me so tight when she hit the asphalt.

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Header photograph by Linds Sanders
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

I stood at the edge of my life
to inspect if there is a new way to begin, 

but all I found was the same familiar silence
swallowing me whole. 

My ears were bleeding white, I ran out of my body
and slid into a coffee shop. 

There is no sane way to escape

the body. The boy behind the counter offered me his teeth
and wanted my name in return. 

A boy has no name today, stranger—
I’ll carry your name as mine today. 

A cup of hot coffee on the table, 
and in it, the art of a cat letting off an atomic bomb.

I tug at my shirt, and I am the cat.
I tug at my fur and I am the bomb. 

What is there to do now? 
Why is the jukebox playing the same song

over and over,
and over, and

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Header photograph by Linds Sanders
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

some days I start to think I’m done
with the whole lot of it
but then again there are so many stories
I haven’t heard yet

and I find myself standing in bar bathrooms
and grocery store lines
thinking maybe
I still need more time

more time to hold hands for hours
on a futon in a tiny apartment
tangled up so long we become one limb

more time to dance in the headlights
of your car by the river on a fake spring night
then swing in the park until we forget
what it’s like to worry about
taxes or to-do lists

more time to plunge off a waterfall cliff
to wait for the sun
to warm the mulch underneath
our bare feet

so much more time to see all the versions
of myself I will one day be becoming

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Header photograph by Linds Sanders
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

We agreed on Halloween cookies
and mint chocolate chip ice-cream

for dessert, but I ran back to the freezer
when your next text said you liked Neapolitan

too. We ate brown Japanese curry
from a cube and threw out a backyard blanket

beneath the salt-speck stars and you leaned over
to poke my face with a blade of grass

and closed your eyes to laugh
when I told you I once slept on a hard hospital floor,

how the doctor opened the door
on my foot. We were so close, I could feel our lives

folding together like curry in the pot
then into your spoon, its taste salty and so fat

with the future I forgot about the ice-cream
and cookies in your fridge, or the red wine

on the counter, or the ribbons of air floating
with your breath wrapped in mine. There was so much

I missed, too busy watching the glint
of stars pressed to our skin in this lifetime

of sky, and what were we but two little bits
of taste on its tongue.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

The aisle offers all manner of masculine trophy / each package a beast / mounted and glaring. Each package / a sphinx speaking riddles in a language / my parents refused to teach me and / surely I’m confusing onlookers with my confusion, / so I grab one like its contraband and pay / with a wad of singles and an apology, / like it’s a crime to self-actualize / and I’m compelled to confess / to the cashier: I’m buying these boxers for myself. And she says nothing / because the trans / action is obvious.

I lock the door, blind the windows / leaving only the mirror / and my reflection as witness. / Girly boy hips wrapped in / sapphire, reserved for royalty. / I peacock ’round the privacy of my room, half-feathered / and pale as the moon. Fresh / waistband kissing the hard-earned peach fuzz / below my navel and / blush at the gesture. I make / a stage of the floor tiles, spinning / theatricals under fluorescent light buzzing / like a crowd cheering encore! / Encore! / Nobody gave me permission / to perform, I did that all myself. I wrote the role / and cast myself to act; such is / the nature of becoming.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

We were leaving the park—
the weathered benches
and big-kid swings and wide
expanses of green-turned-yellow-
turned-brown—and the kids
were asleep in the back seat
and their little lashes fluttered
like fallen leaves resting
against sun-stained cheeks
and our song came on
all melancholy and quiet
and you smiled at me
as we linked fingers
over the console and
we headed toward
the highway signs pointing
home, and I thought:
let’s paint this 
bowl, our fruitful life.
Let’s hang it on the fridge.

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

ride the train alone / get on the Amtrak / take a coach seat / down the aisle from the skinny bearded guy with the smoked oysters and the tiny silver fork / sit next to the boy who shows you his party videos where he drinks too much Boone’s Farm / knowing any amount of Boone’s Farm is too much Boone’s Farm / talk to the girl in the tie-dye shirt in the observation car while you sip a BuzzBallz margarita / it’s her first time on Amtrak too / no one but strangers / be whoever you want / you are from a small town in Illinois / you are from the big city / you ghost-write country songs for a living / you are an accountant / America is an oil painting slicked and sliding by in a riot of color / you are born of the wild wind / you precious beating thing

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson