“Alison is surreptitious and likes to take her time relaxing into her approach. When she is in her jumpsuit I know that she is not Alison, or even Alison playing the role of a cat. She is a cat.”

I once prayed in the woods
inside a temple of

branches, and I felt the wind
rise and cease with

the waltz of my lungs,
and I knew She was alive;

My queering consonance. Rendered
by your fingers.

You type me in slowly.
Each digit. A psalm.

“Two girls among the green, between trees. Hands on hips, heads tipped back, eyes searching sky. Six years before Taylor Swift announced her eighth studio album by posting a photo of herself standing in a forest, she posted another photo of a forest holding two women, which she has since deleted from her grid. Don’t stress, it’s not gone. It’s just entered the next stage in the celebrity Instagram life cycle, which means that it’s truly ours now, property of the stans with the prescience to preserve.”

The deer is dead, road-crumpled, and surrounded by vultures—

an elegant coven of seven, necks bowed, dark wings shifting

like the skirts of gossiping widows. The vultures ignore

Alexa, tell me you love me. I’ve programmed you to tell me you love me. Alexa, from now on, call me Beloved.