1. before summer arrived, i was told to turn on the air conditioner.                    the repairman on the screen was old & simple,...

I bite the acrylics on my nails  until I hate myself  because it hurts  and my mom will yell at me  for wasting her money and my time I...

They taught me young, how to balance womanhood on my narrow shoulders, like a glass vase filled to the brim,  fragile, yet expected to...

I still try to find you in every ocean I go to. I lay my body beneath the rip currents, Under the waves and the sand.  All I find is a...

If I’m courageous enough  I’ll jump off a 43 foot cliff holding hands with  raindrops as they dive from the clouds. They’ll leave leopard...

amount to so little too early in your life. gather sense and sweetness.  at the very end, you might see many cities, many people and...

an erasure of 1 Corinthians 13 Men or angles, tongues of Love: mysteries. I am nothing. I gain nothing. Love is no truth. Love failed...

I keep thinking  about the time in high school  when you drew  me  a map of the city,  I still have it somewhere.  It was so easy  to get...

Aphrodite, will you make me beautiful?  tried abcdalready tried; gave me raw oyst  oysters algae blue when I was a baby so I could throw...

there's no coming-out story like announcing your gayness in a room full of other people's plastic plants, manufactured autumn leaves,...

i cannot find wisconsin on google or in my soul nor do i want to. milwaukee fades like greyed-out photographs moves like water,...

i wasn't raised for religion. every wednesday, i fell asleep during chapel but without fail i woke up when the lights dimmed for the...

just came home from my dentist appointment. daddy drops me off at the steps of building 403. “don’t tell your mom we got ice cream” he...

I stood on the sidewalk on a summer afternoon, peeling cuticles from my finger and brushing my sore wrists against the sweat racing...

In some other world I am not wrapped in happy gold swirls, no silver-dust showers, medallion flowers, I am no whisper in a picture of...

If you could decipher what can I get for you? as I want to hear your voice as I drift asleep. Then I would’ve told you that your hair...

little half-winged   fledgling   thing stumbling    past the dance    floor hands clasped     eyes on the ground trying not      to make...

A circle, a jump, and a dot. I guess that’s the most appropriate response To a betrayal: oh. I whisper through slightly parted lips, When...

Katherine Zhao is a 16-year-old writer and artist from New York. Her work has been recognized by various national and international...

maybe I’ll be in a museum one day. They’ll put me up for display, tell people all about who I was. What the size of my collarbone...