By Zoey Miller Photo credit: Michael Prewett via unsplash.com I had been feigning sleep for the past hour or so when she finally roused herself awake. My arm was awkwardly draped across her nude, lithe frame, going numb from the hollow post-sex gesture. I wasn’t sure if it was more…

I grew up a straight, black, inner-city kid dreaming of living somewhere as safe and beautiful as Stars Hollow — “So where you from, man?” He asked. He wore a flat-bill hat that rested on his head at an impossible angle. It was not quite 45 degrees, and slanted to point upward, leaving the impression that it wasn’t adjusted purposefully, but it was, and any human who had ever worn…

By Zoey Miller His eyes trace over each page delicately. They are not the wide and full innocent eyes of a boy. They are squinting. They are careful. Cautious but curious. He doesn’t devour each word but tastes them, delicately. As if the flavor of one page could overpower the…

By Zoey Miller So I danced there in soft easy circles, cheek to cheek with a fifty something year old puerto rican lesbian. Aged and scarred, track marks running down the length of tattooed slender arms, in a dimly lit gay bar as some drunk and sad duet karaoked the words to Purple Rain. She kept whispering gently in my ear, “all mothers forgive”, repeating feverishly, “all mothers love”. I don’t know if it was for me or more for her but I gave thanks. Thanks to Prince and to whiskey. To these moments and to the Universe.

By Zoey Miller Photo by Ian Espinosa @greystorm There is levity In dark rooms and microfiber In blankets and self truths In lies and netflix And in pornography And in cats And in closed doors And there are dreams in banquets Of dining halls of friends Forgiven trysts Self loathing comforts that give us All too much Of what we’ve gotten All too much of what we asked Damning us With love And spoils we’ve never earned

By Zoey Miller Artwork by Joseph Rumora. IG: joseph_rumora I’ve never been the type of person to insist upon anyone that what I’m telling them is the absolute truth. I try not to make it a habit to insult anyone’s intelligence who didn’t otherwise deserve it. That isn’t to say…

By Zoey Miller Art by Bryan Christopher Moss #strangethingsmoss Exhausted, the mother sleeps as the baby is taken from her. The grandmother plucks it up with the gentle swiftness of an adept hand. Her skin, only slightly wrinkled from age, belies her experience. “Phone the father,” She urges the child’s…

In Space, And Loveless It’s not like he didn’t know what the loneliness was. But he felt apart from it, separate and pocketed from the cold. The whiskey was there though, creating an embryonic envelope between him and everything frigid and harsh and barbed to the touch. His breath felt…