The wind isn’t really knocked out of you. When you fall, you panic, hold your breath, tense every muscle. 

The killer dispatched the boyfriend easily in the kitchen, and then he had an idea.

At one point, Justin’s stick got swatted and went flying. He hesitated for a moment, before strut-skating to the bench. This is not something a hockey player would normally do, just leave an unbroken stick on the ice during a non-competitive game. Someone eventually pushed the stick over to the dark team’s bench. “Pick it up,” Tony heard him say. For a second, Tony thought Justin was talking to him. Turns out he was talking to his bodyguard.

I come to you the way an animal finds a quiet place to die.

Jordan Castro writes about rapper Peewee Longway, memories of his dad and Run-D.M.C., his views on Christmas over the years, and some of his favorite Christmas rap lines.

I couldn’t sleep when we shared a bed anyway, so most nights, when he was deep enough, I wriggled out of his armpit to lay on the floor, play Pokémon until sunrise caught on spots in the window.

Yes,we are parasites of the sun, but refuse to say so. We never mouth the same words twice. 

six years later and I only know how to be needed

Latvia’s Baltic coastline is almost completely undeveloped except for a few fishing villages and some dilapidated concrete resorts for Communist Party officials.  A forest of black pines begins right at the edge of sixty-foot dunes.

Because Math! 

a text msg that was sent:

ur hands my hands
both needed if i hit
u first would u hit me back

Seen two hours after I fell in love with you

the text msg that needed 2 be

1. She told him to shut the window-slats. Every shred of light should be brushed away. She wanted to feel invisible.

From Osama Bin Laden to the WNBA, Jordan Castro and friends explore who/what has sauce, and who/what doesn't.

Wasn’t this, after all, why she’d come out here in the first place? To find something special? 

I meet a girl on OK Cupid and the first date goes well enough.

Catie sent me her new book
said I was in it a fair amount
that’s a good way to get me to read something

In her third memoir, Belief is its own kind of truth, Maybe, Lori Jakiela uses a collage-style structure to write about the collage-like process of assembling an identity, and the particular

Jordan Castro reviews rapper Travis Scott's debut studio album Rodeo.

I’ve thought a lot about what it is that draws me into slasher films as a gay man. Maybe I am drawn to them because I read about so many queer people being victimized; in a way I am turning to them for survival tips.

We had no idea what Erotica Week would look like when we dreamed it up, over Twitter, months ago. And now that it's finally here, I'd describe it like this: the stories and poems on the site this