untitled – chapbook , 2025

first day of spring

Chicago‘s last frost date rests between April 11-20
seeds sit in storage waiting 
out the cold to exit their neatly tight bags, 
literature enclosed 
sow outdoors after danger 
of frost has passed

I lie in my bathtub at 12:51am 
it was 60 degrees this morning and now 
37 degrees this morning 
I wrestle the urge to stay up all night 
and the obligation to sleep similarly 
underneath a thin layer of woven fabric

I hear the vibration 
of the filter in my turtle’s tank
he sleeps at the water’s surface 
to reduce the time
he must swim in order to breathe air
turtles experience drowsiness
from their active urge to swim towards the glass perimeter
made evident by the claw markings
on the right side of the enclosure — 
semi-terrestrial, restless fingerprint

the double pane separates me from air 
yet remains audible 
the danger of frost seeps within
bedside notepads left closed 
we’ve had all winter to write 

we keep our stationary, stacked 
our eyes shut
close enough to the surface to rest 
but too deep to germinate







period piece 

Landscaping trucks sleep on snow days in December, the building of the new prison in Chinatown doesn’t.

I undergo impromptu exposure therapy during Thanksgiving poker rounds by being grouped with the ladies — and again that night via What’s App. I receive a message from a man who will pay me to watch him jack off in person — my compensation depending on whether or not I wear a skirt. 

My other contacts on What’s App are my mother and my friend who is incarcerated in the South. She has a 5x7 photo of me eating a doughnut on the wall in her cell alongside a poster of a girl in a bikini. As a trans woman she spends her days wishing she’d at least been placed in a women’s prison. I spend the day getting in and out of a fishnet bodysuit which arrived at the 711 lockers last night in between rounds of Guitar Hero II. I tell this man I’m 25% interested which is enough for him to send me $15. I’ll send the money to my friend to buy Swiss Miss packets from the commissary so she can make ice cream using Oreos, vanilla creamer and cream cheese. She sends me the recipe in return.

My mom sends me a jury duty summons in New York along with the texture of the unpolished wood floor and her legs which she used to balance the paper while taking the photo. “Please call before you get arrested and get placed in an all women’s prison,” which is her way of acknowledging that I’m nonbinary. 

I met a man yesterday who asked me thoughtful questions about owning my own business.
While he spoke I imagined being his wife caring for his children from another marriage. We'd take turns picking up the kids while the other stays on-site working the land building gardens as a family. I’d no longer get invited to wusiness (Women Owned Business) meetings but I’d be a charm for him to wear.

For now, I get paid $3310 in guitar hero currency for the virtual gig - playing PlayStation in my room alone as a boy. 








2BR 1BATH

as spirits swing and throw
their bodies they project their own 
echo of mortality into the air 
their friends breathe in 
the dust from the dollhouse 
tiny furniture beside bedside table holds 
an even more tiny book

miniature homes tempt human touch 
alongside empty hands and emptier hallways 
matching set of chairs 
for a shiva never sat
prefabricated cupboards carry
enough glassware to set 4 tables of 4 
stable familiar stillness
but seldom comes 
one daring enough to play 








umbilical

she is on the other side 
of the phone twisting the cord 
I twist a metal thread between my fingers 

it’s the year 2024 here as it is there 
wattage still works in the same way
and is calculated in the same way
I read the forecast in the morning on my cellphone 
the way temperature is indicated there is via flag 
made of cardboard:
green indicating warmth but not extreme heat
yellow indicating warning of extreme heat
the weather is better understood through
skin’s observation of the heat,
the wilting of the petiole and stem, 
more precise 

most phone calls between us end when the line shuts
for the first time since we began speaking 
I hear the phone hit the receiver
the sound is pleasing 
as it is the sound of a decision not made for us 
but made by one of us 

the USPS 
an endangered animal 
the cable underwater 
her twin sister
all on my mind today 








when she was living

I come here to see my grandmother because she cannot go on a plane. That is the only reason I find myself here. I take a bus to the airport, an airtrain to the subway, then train to take an Uber. All to get to her. Paying for each piece as I go. I do not add up the time in hours or the trips in dollars because I don’t need to. My fee reveals itself to me via an unquantifiable, physiological cost. Burdening my own system. Moments that push me and then some inches past. A running meter.

It’s sitting at the $10,000 dining room table at my cousin's house.  The six uniform chairs, two “heads” to the table however, this time they are not opponents. It’s not long before it begins— 
the retroactive discussion of the domestic prison I grew up within. Impressively, they manage to converse about it without acknowledging it. It’s an art, it’s a dinner table conversation where they say more words and speak louder than I do. They reminisce about my childhood as if it was a fucked up movie they had seen years ago and are now recalling from the back of their own minds. The plot, vague within their memories but still saturated. They rattle off moments of their own discomfort as on-lookers. 

They ask me zero questions. They know two children, their own relatives, still live within those brick walls. Then and now, never asking what I, or we, need or needed. The difference now is that they talk as if it were in the past. In complete disregard of the discomfort I live in, what I reconcile with daily, that it is very much not over, that it is very much not table-talk. 

I am an audience member for the stories they tell, relieved they finally get to discuss it. “I remember you hiding in the car to avoid being seen, covering your face with a scarf. Or the time we met in Staples to see you just for just five minutes, our alibi of the coincidence previously rehearsed as we were restricted from communicating with one another. 

We are not the same. Your dinner is served every night. My dinner is served sometimes. Sometimes alone. Sometimes while Valerie is locked upstairs and I stare at her empty seat across mine. How is a child is supposed to eat while the person they love most has had that privilege taken from them?  The feeling of cold peas and uncooked silken tofu, how it tastes while tears run off of your cheeks and how you learn to stop them.  My feet, so small they didn’t even touch the floor. 

Our dining room table was glass with a corner missing. The sharp edge positioned to my left. The hours I looked into the weaving of the wicker frame, the fibers more frayed each year. I hear myself breathe and tell myself to breathe quieter. 

When he takes the basement stairs I can hear the flat rubber sole of the Converse sneakers leave the floor and make contact with the first step. The coarse, pelted rug, the creek of unfinished wood- echoing in the hollow space beneath them. The amount of time I have left (approximately 12.5 seconds once the first step has been taken).

I tighten my small body to solidify my physical edge— the edge I must define despite my envy for water. As much as I wish for a molecular form that cannot take a grip, a form that cannot be held as I have never been held in any other way than captive. Please continue to laugh and commiserate over my pain as I idley sink deeper into my seat, into a nightmare I cannot forget the texture of - my skin has become so absorbent - these past 29 years. 

I allow myself:
5-7 bumps of K 
5-6 tequila sodas on the first night
2 whiskey cokes
1 bottle of Italian wine
1.5 airbars one pink one yellow
5 hits off a weed pen
as many sips of this overpriced whiskey as I please 
and yet, I remain so hyper-vigilant and alert— 
I feel sober all 72 hours of my trip to New York. 

When I arrive back in Chicago, I give myself a free day. I wash my clothes, even my jacket, not because they smell like cat piss - which they do - but because I need to watch the liquid as it drains through the lowest point in the basement floor. I light the lint from the trap on fire. I give myself the day. 







houseplant people

they went foraging
two suburban cats
scrambling, connection to nature 
sought out on weekends only
when you have an indoor mind
online with an app that confirms the shape 
of the berry you hold as edible to birds, 
humans

the feminine hand urging primal labor— 
a girlfriend mothering her underfed boyfriend 
leading him to water 
via online resourcing 
feeding two caged birds with one berry 









I. car sick by own driving
made stable by own instability 
uterine wallpaper
lining up imperfectly








back-to-back back-bones

my sister has had a birthmark
for as long as I can remember
south of her spine
the shape of a light leak, indented
like the braille on the elevator button you press 
as you ascend to your designated floor

I was born with a birthmark as well
a shade of pink,		        
flesh with my skin
visual by sight only
a kiss the size of my adult lips
when I lock eyes with the home 
her birthmark has made on her back
less pink each year
I mark that we were stamped 
with the same ink

it wasn’t until I moved into a 100-year-old unit in Chicago 
that I noticed the shape was printed in my mind 
like a watermark. 
standing in the shower,
within the textured glass that protected my body
from the gaze of others,
a repeating pattern, an abstract shape
coin-sized, also indented
three dimensional, hand-made,
I raised my palm to touch the glass 
already sure of the texture 
before I made contact.

in the sand a few feet in front of me, 
burned due to negligence,
she gazed upon the shore.
I hoped she would live forever
and that as we aged,
we would know exactly where on each other’s flesh
lived a shape we both shared,
before it was absorbed by our bodies 
and became a secret that lived 
underneath our skin.








alaskan king crab 

on a beach you find a single crab claw 
dropped from high above
seemingly discarded by the clouds or more likely a seagull
how can we say we know for sure
when you are standing there
looking down at that single crab claw 
and that’s all the evidence you have 
the smell of the decaying body
much more mild
in sand than in the store
could the crab recognize its armless shadow 
you find yourself wondering 

in both worlds
where the crab lives in the sand 
and his brother on ice
there continues to be two kinds of people;
the one who keeps the window shut
to get better gas mileage
and the one with their arm extended
as they attempt to shake the hands of branches
risking the departure of their own limb
to enjoy a fuller breeze









when I was young

my father told me 
he’d break my arm 
I trim the broken 
stems off plants 
that need it
deliberately,
to show kindness towards 
small things 
but kindness
is not for everyone 








when you told me i could stay the night

I had not imagined blanket stretched to all cornetightly bound bedding framed much similar to
wood canvas, bed beside tables, 
bodies folded neatly
laundry in the corner
interlaced placed on top 
and within one another 

I follow the fabric back into the shadows of the creases 
that your back smooths, the threads proximity to one another 
standing out despite the darkness 

the choreography of weaving a quilt 
you complete them with your eyes closed
the finished product draped over the back of your couch 
waiting to keep someone warm
the cold floor looks up at the rugs 
hung like art on your walls 

idle comfort and counting threads 
I sweep the clipped ends into the cold corners of your studio floor 
your arms remain crossed across your chest while you sleep
you have gotten good at self soothing

your shirt soft, 
the machine that stitched it hard, 
awake in the dark I lay 
as still as the sewing needle
the foot that feeds the pedal 
choosing to feed itself instead








II. you walk on foot 
I trace circles 
via bike wheel 
you walk 
so slow 
I bike
clumsy figure 8s
to keep up 
with your pace








airfare cinema

I don’t turn off the music
entering both of my ears via headphones
as the flight attendants stand in the aisle
telling us what to do if we lose oxygen
or if we were to crash into a body of water
I look up, but only to watch the choreography
you know, that dance,
the synchronized points and waves
the pulling of strings
the buckling of a disembodied seatbelt.
they are the airline’s marionettes
angels that do not work for the sky
they just know how it works
and what to do when it doesn’t.

I know at one point they will remind us
to help ourselves before helping others
I have to wonder what memory enters each of their minds
when they repeat this advice day-in and day-out
who takes and takes from the women    
ripping the wings off their backs
while the women imagine that one day
when they will get all they have given
handed back to them
as they recline in teal, plastic lawn chairs
holding lemonade with a pink umbrella 
as men fan them with large palm tree fronds 
that is, if they don’t go down in a plane                
before that big day of reimbursement comes
if the sky works until then
                                                              
Amy Winehouse sings as I drift off into a sky of my own
where I take a seat and stare
into a mirror that rests at the bottom of a shallow pond
and she stares back at me and mouths,
“so tired,
I’m so damn tired”








cleaning the lint trap

shredded threads, blended cloth ligaments 
spun out and regurgitated by our broke dryer
I scrape them from the lint trap 
with my sharp nails
dirt perpetually underneath
hand morphing into fist I throw the fibers
into the same corner of the basement 
where I assumed someone had thought to add a receptacle but no, 
just a pile, neglected shadows of our fabricated possessions 
decomposition begins to take place
hung up the shelves spilled dry wall on my clean sheets 
and for a reasonable price too 
broke dryer paired perfectly with broke washer 
task rabbit fixed my leaky marriage 
I continue to expecting the push mower to move mountains 
on parkway gravel 
slowly here in squalor 
for $675/month in Chicago







the human heart is deep

let it 
burst in small amounts everyday 
or it will build and sink you.
let it 
expand 
run wild and 
hold you
make you feel like this is all it will ever be that 
your heart aches life long 
because it will,
for different things, 
everyday

special thanks to Gabe & Brendan for their edits and feedback.