You told me you understood when I tried to explain why my face was so pale, my eyes so sunken, my hands so shaky. I was sure I was crazy—you not only said I wasn’t crazy, but asked me point blank if I was a spy.

I got a tattoo on my ass at her behest.

I’m still waiting for the day that my cum tastes like water and not martyrdom.

We fumbled about with each other for a few years, but things blew over before we could settle into anything like conjugality.

And as I darkened, I needed nothing.

Jaia Hamid Bashir spoke with Hobart editor, Breen Nolan, about her debut poetry collection, The Afterlife of Sweetness, how she sees the self as a kind of fiction and her love of making

in large, friendly, white type on the chest, is the name of a sex toy for men.

  There were times I could barely leave bed, but he insisted we spend weekends in Palm Springs.

Or maybe he’d become enamored with another OnlyFans model with a bigger butt and perkier tits and a more welcoming smile.

He unfolded his best plastic chair and sat it in the pool. He’d sweat and drink more liquor and point his gun at the ocean.

“I should punch your lights out. But that wouldn’t do either of us much good would it?”

No one answered her when she asked where they were taking me. I'd heard of people being dumped in parking lots. I'd heard of people being flown to Texas, to fucking El Salvador, legal citizens with no practical recourse.

1

During my last couple of years in Spain, things—how shall we say?—spun out of control. It was like getting tossed by one of those huge ferocious Northern Californian waves that tumbles you, holds

Here I am on a Saturday night, preparing for another dreadful evening with a man my father handpicked

it explodes painfully

It goes unsaid that this game is really about kissing and groping.

It felt like belonging, like being needed.

I was beginning to understand that when Nana said family protects family at any cost, she meant any cost.

I want you to see me ignoring you.

My last few nights at Will’s house were strained but also pleasant. I consciously wanted to love him. And I did, in a way, but I was drifting.

The terrains alien, the people / Extra terrestrial / Make sense do not.

Punishments:

—deprivation of recreation

—bread and water diet

—48-hour dungeon stays; no bed, no food, no lights

My wife and I run around the tables in our moisture-wicking workout clothes for the entire 177-minute runtime of the masterful, twenty-nine-track album.

This was my chance! I moved to the seat in front of her and we lay across our seats and laughed together like a yin-yang necklace coming back together.

or because I’d seen him unwrap the extra large condom and suddenly longed, anxiously and fatuously like a girl wanting her stuffed animal, for my first boyfriend who weighed less than me

writing like someone might care