Something which simmers, and which threatens to boil over—but isn't there yet. Not quite.

• Written and poked at between high school (maybe?) and age 22.
• Published online by Apricity Press, 30 June 2025.

Written with the titular song in mind, this is a prose poem; a piecemeal memory.

You want to know something funny? My dad drove an Infiniti when I was a kid, not a Toyota. For some reason I got those wires crossed. He did drive a Toyota once, before my memory, but the car of this poem was the Infiniti. Let's pretend together that I chose to fudge it because Toyota makes for more compelling syllabics.

• Written at age 22.
• Published online by Major 7th Magazine, 29 December 2024.

A clawing frustration on aromanticism.

I didn't want the word "aromantic" to appear anywhere in this piece, when I first set out to write it. But the people I workshopped it with failed to recognize what plainly was. They assumed the speaker was resisting love, not that they didn't want it. I hated that desperately. Enough to stoop to explaining myself.

• Written at age 21.
• Published online by Long River Review, 26 April 2024.
• Winner of the 2023-24 Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Prize in Poetry.

A poem; a beseeching of the dark.

• Written and poked at between ages 18-21.
• Published in a physical zine by Unmagnolia Magazine, with online PDF available, 31 October 2023.

A short poem on the closed mouth.

• Written at age 20.
• Published by Long River Review in their bound journal, volume 26, 27 April 2023; this publication is available from the UConn Archives & Special Collections.